Master of Buckets
Ok, probably it is not the best idea to start an article’s title with a pun on a Metallica song but if it managed to make you chuckle, I am happy.
Like most deep, contemplative thoughts this thought occurred to me while staring at an ice-capped mountain, with a calm serene lake illuminated by the first rays of the sun. I was engulfed by a sense of overwhelming gratitude to be able to witness such a sight.
A little background, I was training for the Zurich marathon and was excited about running my 1st marathon in 2 years, when a.) The race got cancelled b.) The glute issue which has plagued me for the last 6 months, flared up. Unlike the last time, I chose to stop and visit my physiotherapist, medical massage therapist and osteopath. But this being winters, the healing process was a tad slow. I still have stiffness but I am being smart about managing myself and it has been helping. On the day of this particular run, I was heading for a session not a 100% sure about how my glute would hold up. After all, injuries: small or big dent your confidence a bit.
For a minute, I just stared slack-jawed at the sight infront of me and wondered if my pre-occupation with my injury was even a worth my time. I’m not saying I can ignore the injury and keep running because I am surrounded by beautiful landscape. I’m talking about going back and remembering why I started running in the first place.
The year was 2012. I was fat. I had just recovered from typhoid and it brought upon an epiphany, “I want to amount to something in life”. Having been an athlete for most of my life and having wanted to run the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon for all 4 years of my college life, but never been fit enough, I decided to take a crack. It was a struggle, there was no GPS watch, no 4% shoes, no Dri-fit clothing and I didn’t know that Kenenisa Bekele existed and that 1 year after I commenced my journey, Eliud Kipchoge would start his monster reign as the marathon GOAT. I was spent, it took me 2 hours and 23 minutes and I couldn’t even stand up straight.
In the years that followed, I lost the weight(gained it back, lost it again), became faster (and slower and then faster again), had countless injuries, made many friends through running(lost some of them, found some again), moved to a different country which changed my perspective on what talent and training mean, changed my perception of hardwork, suffered a ton of heartbreak and found happiness in the strangest of places.
Here’s the thing, as I became better my competitive nature kicked in. When I was a swimmer, my favorite swimmer was Ian Thorpe and I knew his personal best times by heart. In training sessions, I trained trying to come as close to his times. My friends played in the pool and I ignored them, swimming lap after lap as I got closer to his times (Tbh, I wasn’t that close but to be within 8" of Thorpe’s 100m PB at age 15 was something that made me proud. Thorpey made his international debut at the age of 15. I was nowhere near his talent, but I wanted to see how close I could get.)
This same mentality follows me everywhere. I am competitive. I am not satisfied if I can’t bring my best self out on the table when it counts. I never care about what others around me are doing, I care about what is the best version of something out there and how good can I be. I don’t want to achieve perfection but I don’t want to live my life knowing what I could’ve done better.
For a few years, I was a miserable wreck. I started chasing endurance goals as a young athlete without understanding the concept of having a strong base. That thing I talked about earlier, about amounting to something in life, that became my paramount target. The 1st person to do this and the 1st person achieve that. I chased goals and when you throw yourself at a lot of different goals, some of them stick and I achieved some things in my life, which I am proud of but in a way, they set me back as a person. Achieving things without building a base left me weaker as an athlete, getting to goals without growing as a person left me shallow and for years, I settled with a mentality that harbored mediocrity.
There’s nothing special about a 32 hour Ultraman finish. The special part was that despite being a total wreck, I found another gear to keep pushing. It didn’t solve anything in my life. Had I failed at the Ultraman though, the negative spiral which would’ve ensued might have forced maturity at an accelerated rate but over the years that followed, time brought that to me too.
The bucket I had, was overflowing. What do you then? If you put a small bucket infront of a tap it will fill quickly. The shallower your bucket is, the faster it will fill and the feelings of desperation would be stronger.
But what if your bucket was a dam? Had tremendous depth, the flow was in your control and the overflow could be used to harness something productive?
A friend of mine, who is very similar to me and who I love dearly started learning a musical instrument. I’m proud of him for doing that but I saw him do what I did with my running. Chasing after goals instead of focusing on mastery, taking shallow buckets instead of making a dam. Thinking about that got me thinking about my perspective on injury, to that view of the lake and this article.
There’s a lot of value in setting goals and achieving them. Without goals, life seems meaningless. Longevity is observed in humans who live with a purpose. But the purpose isn’t necessarily a goal. Broad strokes, yes. But a purpose can encompass a series of goals, conditional or unconditional that help you and others grow.
There are lot of reasons which have made me a better runner over the last few years but one of the biggest reasons is this sense of bigger purpose. To me, running a 2:15 marathon is a bucket list goal, but that bucket list falls in a dam of self-improvement both in terms of physical fitness and mental, changing my perspective towards injuries, not caring about what the weather outside is like, not caring about what the bug on my GPS watch says, not wallowing in my glory and not being consumed by my failures.
When you grow as an athlete, you realize that workouts become harder, the paces you once thought only elites could run are visible on your watch and to get to that point you do workouts which can exhaust you both mentally and physically(especially if you’re not a professional), make your muscles more vulnerable to injuries and when that injury does happen, it feels like a bummer. But here’s the thing, look at where you are right now. Look at where you started and how far you came, the work you put in and this injury is just a sign that says you’ve been working hard. It is usually not the end of the world, it passes by usually leaving you more time to work on the weaknesses that caused the injury and you grow as a person because of it.
The same applies to almost anything else we begin to complain about as runners(We are one whiny breed, aren’t we?).
I often throw a condescending snort at someone complaining about the cold and the wind and the rain: As if it was 20 degrees and sunny for me? Harden the f*ck up, kid but then I realize I am being a judgmental shrew. It’s human nature to complain, I did it for many years before actually learning to enjoy the tough conditions (becoming a dam) and it has helped me during racing. Maybe the people who are complaining just like the attention it gets them when they do something despite the conditions. Maybe they didn’t succeed according to their definition of success and so they are looking for excuses. Either way, in my opinion as and when those people grow as athletes they will realize that conditions are irrelevant and it is the effort you apply which matters. And if you were able to keep your mind off focusing on the cold and wind and focused on doing the job infront of you, it was a highly successful venture regardless of your mile split.
The tl; dr version of it is this: Life is a series of endless obstacles designed to make you tough. You are survivors, right from the start (the embryo fertilization stage) to the fact that we’re the only known living species in this universe. Life feels meaningless without a goal, but make sure that your goal focuses on growth and includes the importance of paying attention to and enjoying the process of getting to that goal, than just achieving your goal.
And stop complaining, vent for a bit to friends and then let go. Your energy is better spent on other things.
Namaste.
Thank you for reading.