What to do when it all goes wrong in 5 steps

A friend asked me the other day what I do when I don't get the feeling I was hoping for post race. A more precise way to frame this question might be, 'what do you do when, having slogged your heart out for months of training, you then fail to execute as well as you'd hoped, and are left heartbroken on the finish line'? 

This might sound a bit dramatic (I'm sure that I feel these things a little bit  far too deeply considering that I run for fun), but in my experience dreams dashed hurt us mere mortals just as much as they do the Gods and Goddesses of our sport. The issue is that well, you just feel a bit silly when you feel like this after not doing a local race quite as well as you'd hoped. 

**Disclaimer: I haven't actually watched this video the whole way through properly because it makes me anxious just watching it. Paula Radcliffe has long been a hero of mine and I just can't see her in this much distress. Sport does this to me, whether the ending is good or bad. It started with Linford Christie won the 100m in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. The London Olympics went so well that I almost needed Isotonic drinks to replace the salts lost weeping. Mo Farah owes me two bottles of coconut water.

So, what do you do? I'm not a sports psychologist or any sort of great champion so this is in not put up as a model to follow but this is basically how it goes for me: 

1. Be sad, angry, frustrated. Decide that I've been deluding myself entirely and all those previous great runs were a cash of chip measurement error or a broken Garmin. I should throw away my trainers immediately and never run again
2. Dagger eyes to anyone that tells me that I did so well compared to x, y, z/it's the taking part that counts/blah blah blah. Whatever. If it was the taking part that counted then why did I train? 
3. Re-group and get over myself. It's a race, not my life. It doesn't define what I'm worth.   
4. Remember that the result was one part of a long process, and remind myself that through the training cycle I have 
1. Got a lot better at running 
2. Learnt a lot about myself and this moment is probably when I'm learning the most 
5. Get back out there. It was one run out of thousands. Wipe it from the record 

I don't think there's really anything wrong with getting so wound up over a failed run as long as you move on.  If you really want something and you don't get it, it would be odd to be completely okay about it. I move through these five stages at different speeds depending on the situation and sometimes I go backwards a bit before getting to five. 

I'm getting better at it whenever it does happen. I also feel like each time I come back mentally a lot stronger with my love of running renewed. Getting kicked to humility the hard way reminds me why I love this sport. It never gets easier, you just get better at it. 

Now, I feel awful about having a Paul Radcliffe failure on this blog without a bit of balance. Here she is smashing the world record in London, 2003.