Why I Don’t Care About Winning My Age Group

Why I Don’t Care About Winning My Age Group

And why I should

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash

There are many local races where I have won my age group, but I generally don’t care. If all I did was place in my age group, I would usually never stick around for the awards ceremony. I have a lot to do, and awards ceremonies are usually in the late morning after the race, so they require sticking around. I usually want to go home and am pretty busy with my job as an attorney.

Part of why I never stick around for age-group awards is that, to me, it is a consolation prize. I’m trying to win an overall award or run a certain time. And to an extent, the age-group award is, most of the time, a consolation prize. The overall first, second, and third-place runners in each race will be on the podium for overall awards, while the age-group awards are for everyone else.

I am not saying this to throw shade at anyone who has an age-group award. One of my friends just ran 2:25 and got second in the 45–49 age group in the Boston Marathon. I know that’s different, but it’s a sign of my high expectations for myself more than anything else. I am averaging 100 miles a week and trying to train to run a 2:25 marathon.

Screenshot from the author on Strava

Everyone should be proud of themselves when they win any award, and I celebrate my friends when they win age-group awards.

But I generally don’t celebrate myself.

I recently ran a 10k with my law firm. I got sixth overall and won the 25–29 age group. But if I ran the time and had the performance I wanted and believed I’m capable of, I should have gotten second or third overall — I ran about a minute and 50 seconds off my personal best from college.

Screenshot from the author

Many of my colleagues didn’t know that I was capable of a 34-minute 10k, and they were impressed that I won my age group. I even got a big shout-out in a firm-wide email and received a lot of congratulations in person. Many of my colleagues asked how I could run 100 miles a week while working hard as an attorney.

I was flattered and really appreciated the sentiment, but downplayed the accomplishment because, in my mind, I ran poorly. It wasn’t just the time, but how I executed the race — I went out too fast at the pace I thought I should do, rather than let the pace come to me and be tactical.

There may have been a ceremony where the race organizers called my name for an award, but I didn’t stay. I wouldn’t say I was ashamed of the award, and I was happy that I went out there and tried and had a good workout. But I felt like I was capable of a much better performance and had higher priorities than sticking around for my age-group award.

This mindset can bleed into overall awards, too. I can win the race and run a poor time, and think it was not a good day. There is some merit in not caring about what other people are doing and not comparing myself to others.

I am only focused on improving myself and whether I can meet my own standards. If I won a local race but had a subpar performance by my standards, then there’s a chance I won’t stick around. I once got third in a local marathon, but ran a 2:46. I was not very proud of it and had things to do, so I asked a friend to get my award and hold on to it so I could pick it up later.

With age-group awards, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re a consolation prize. I am also well aware that in most local races, my age group (25–29) is one of the most competitive because this is the physical peak in performance for most people. So I should take the silver lining consolation prize and be proud of it.

I am great at finding the silver lining in most situations in life as a Christian, husband, friend, attorney, and writer. With running, it’s different because I have been doing it for 17 years. I have worked so hard, just not to see improvement at times. Improvement became a lot harder once I started running under five-minute miles when I was 14. I go through long stages of plateau followed by big breakthroughs, so it gets frustrating that improvement isn’t linear like it is in other parts of my life.

I am a positive person, and I still am about running in most respects. And I know this piece can appear negative, but for so many of us who are not Olympians, it’s a race against ourselves, not the field. I would rather get last place and run a race I’m proud of than jog my way to a victory. I would rather hop into a competitive marathon where I have no shot at winning and run a 2:22 than hop into a local marathon and win with a 2:36. I would rather be pushed to get the most out of myself than settle.

I think this is the conundrum of being a decent but not elite runner. You want to dream and want to do better. Whether or not it is delusional, you know you can do better and are well aware of your potential to do so.

However, I think I’ve been too caught up in my performance and running personal bests. It’s a balance because I am running as a hobby. And while I care about running fast times and personal bests, it’s about having fun. It’s about teaching life lessons, mental fortitude, and endurance more than anything.

I am successful as an attorney and as a former teacher because of the lessons I learned as a runner. I learned how to pace myself, how to bounce back from setbacks, how to show up every single day, no matter how bad I feel. I learned how to sustainably do intense but consistent work over long periods of time and prioritize the process over the outcome.

I wouldn’t say I never burn out in life or as a runner, but I have, time and again, bounced back from burning out to get better. And there are many more important things than the running part of it — my best friends are the people I met on my high school and college cross-country teams.

And so I think I can do better about being proud of winning my age group and sticking around for awards. Even if I did not run well, I did my best, tried, and did not give up. I gave the race everything I had, and as much as I can control and master the process, that doesn’t always translate into a favorable outcome. There has never been a time in my life when I finished a race, even if I ran great and got a huge PR, and didn’t think, “I think I could have done better.”

Above all, this is meant to be fun. And I am having fun — not always in the pleasurable and hedonistic sense, but in a spiritual and existential sense. I feel like a different person every time I traverse new terrain and accomplish new goals. It isn’t always a PR — I just ran a marathon on the track the other day, something I wanted to get off my bucket list as a test of whether I had the mental fortitude to run 105.5 laps around the track at a moderate pace.

Screenshot from the author

But it can also be fun to run a local race and win my age group. There are a thousand ways I could represent how impressive winning my age group is on my resume if I wanted to, but I think that would be disingenuous if I don’t actually think it’s that impressive. I find a lot of joy in chatting with the other runners who finished around the same place, making friends, following each other on Strava, and occasionally exchanging contact information to run together at a later time.

The competition and camaraderie are sometimes my favorite part of racing, a lot more than the time I run. In one of my worst marathons in Minnesota three years ago, I met four other runners I stayed in a hostel with, and I still keep in touch with them today. Running the 10k with my law firm brought me closer to a lot of my colleagues. As cliché as it sounds, the running community is what brings me joy, even when the actual running isn’t going well. I need to remember that.

I still want to dream. I will still be constructive and think about all the ways I could have done better. But I will, from now on, endeavor to be proud and love the experience.