“You’ve got to fail hard to win hard.”
Yesterday, I had a pretty tough fail. You see, I love trekking into the amazing piles of rock called the Rocky Mountains.
To enable some of these treks, I spend a good portion of the spring into the summer training. I’ve been pushing my training hike harder and harder. The past couple of weeks have brought the hope of a new personal record or PR.
Last night, I failed again. I came within three minutes. But this is more an attempt to reach back a few years to when I was in much better shape. (I guess I’ve spent too much time drinking beer, aka “working on my girlish figure.”)
In the spring of 2006, I decided that I wanted to climb Long’s Peak. (14er.com link here) So, I grabbed a couple of hiking partners and began training. Every weekend my friends and I would run* Gray Rock. (* not actually running) Every weekend for three months, we were up there.
As a result of all of the planning and training, my first attempt on a bigger mountain was successful. We’ll call this winning.
Five years later, my goals have obviously grown. One of the newer goals, really a sub-goal as this is still training, is to run Gray Rock in less than 1 hour. A stepping stone to this is a new PR. And then probably another. You get the idea. All of these PRs are still failing. Drop a minute here, two or three minutes there, and you come closer. We’ll call this failing.
My two attempts in 2011 have been 1:16 and 1:12. The current PR is 1:10. Last night hurt. It’s been a while since I’ve actually pushed myself hard enough to want to lose my lunch or become light-headed. Failing is hard.
Man, that sub one hour is going to taste SO GOOD! “You’ve got to fail hard to win hard.”
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