The Big Quit

Second only to “everything happens for a reason” on my list of pointless aphorisms is “failure is not an option.” Like EHFAR, FINAO is actually true, but not for the reasons those who spout it think. If failure were a choice, it would set up a paradox somewhat like “everything I say is a lie.” If you choose to fail, and you do, then you actually didn’t fail. Do you kick yourself or pump your fist and go “aw yeah”? Moreover, as an educator I believe that failure, far from being something to fear and shun, is necessary and even good. If you don’t fail, you don’t learn. Einstein was a colossal failure at one point in his life (or at least he thought he was, though later on it was discovered that he’d been right all along, because Al was a badass that way). Everything from science to the arts has a firm foundation in getting it wrong—a lot.

So failure is not an option, but it’s totally cool. But what about quitting? That’s quite different. Unlike failure, quitting is a choice, usually one made to avoid failure. To err is human, but to quit, if you believe in pithy aphorisms, is a vile act of pure cowardice no one should ever even think of committing.

Perhaps. But in case you’re curious, I can tell you what happens when you do quit.

A brief summary, in case you’re tuning in for the first time: this summer I started training for the marathon that happened just this past weekend, in hopes of qualifying for Boston. I trained hard, which is what you have to do if you have this goal, and for a few months I trained really, really well. Then I injured my ankle, or at least some vague unnamed region just north of my ankle, and all that stopped. I took off not nearly enough time to recover, and the remainder of my training was subpar. I faced the marathon hoping my earlier speedwork would carry me but pretty sure it wouldn’t yet still figuring if nothing else, I could try for a small personal record and worry about the BQ another time. The weather looked to be decent, I had a friend to run with, and I was looking forward to the race because, well, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t enjoy it at least some of the time.

This was not one of those enjoy times. Fast-forward (a lot faster than my actual pace) to the halfway point. It’s not going well. I’m slowing down, a lot. My left ankle feels only mildly twinge-y, but my right leg feels very tight, and I know I’m not running efficiently and it’s tiring me out. I already feel out-of-breath and we still have 13 miles to go. All my running spirit is getting sucked down a sinkhole of despair, and I can’t even manage a fake smile when my running buddy punches an effigy of the POTUS right in the face. And we still have 13 miles to go, and the thought of over two more hours of this pointless hell is closing the sinkhole over my head.

I stop. My buddy stops with me. “Go,” I command him. “Go on.” He doesn’t. We walk a bit. “GO!” I all but scream. He keeps walking with me. We start running again.

This happens two more times. At one point the 4-hour pace group catches up to us. Four hours is what I need to break to technically qualify, though I’d need to be a good four or five minutes faster than that if I actually want to run Boston. We run with them for a bit and then watch them go very far away.

At the Mile 15 marker I am looking desperately for anyone who seems like an official-type person so I can surrender myself to the authorities. I spot a blue canopy tent by an aid station and head there. My buddy pleads with me to stay with him, but I’m done. It’s a medical tent, there are people with clipboards and one of those clipboards is the one upon which they record my DNF.

So what happens when you quit? At first, nothing too terrible. The aid station workers are incredibly nice. A woman asks if I’d like ibuprofen and gives me two tablets. (A guy who DNFs after me is asked the same thing and says “yes—eight, please.”) She also wraps me in one of those silver-foil blankets and puts me in a chair as much out of the wind as possible. When burritos are delivered for the volunteers’ lunch, she tries to give me one. I tell her I don’t want to take food from the volunteers since they’ve definitely earned a free lunch; she shakes her head with a disparaging glance at said volunteers, who are mostly young kids and mostly throwing dead leaves at each other instead of doing their duties. At least someone here is having fun.

The wait for the Sag Wagon back to the start/finish is long and cold, but I’m still glad to not be moving, so I don’t feel too bad just yet. I chat with the other DNFs with me in the tent, one of whom was hoping, like me, to BQ at this race. “I qualify for 60,” he said, “so I thought I’d give it a try.” He sighed. “I’ve gone to Boston twice already. I think that may be it for me. Half marathons are looking better and better right now.”

After a good 45 minutes of violent shivering, we finally spot the Sag Wagon, which is the most depressingly but appropriately named vehicle ever. It’s filled with sagging, defeated-looking runners. Everyone is silent; the only sound the whole way back is the crinkling of foil blankets. 

The walk back to the hotel from the finish line is bad. I look for K, who was waiting for me to finish, but there’s no way I’m going to find him in the crowds. I do manage to bump into some running friends of mine who had done the half. I’m sure I look absolutely rock-bottom pathetic at that point because they hug me and say reassuring things. “Did you poop yourself?” one asks. “No? Well then you didn’t fail!” (She did poop herself during a big race, and is impressively self-confidence enough to tell people about it with a hearty laugh.) They hand me a beer, which tastes like liquid magic, and get me safely back to my room.

K returns and consoles me as well. He does not consider my DNF a failure either. All along he’d had misgivings about my running this race, especially after seeing me limping around the house following a long run. He’d worried that I might make my injury worse, which would set me back even further in my goal. He himself DNF’d during a BQ attempt when he knew he wasn’t on pace to hit his goal—he’d finished many races before, so it wasn’t like one more was really going to be a feather in his cap when he hadn’t done what he set out to do, and this way he’d be ready to go for the BQ again much sooner. (He did in fact qualify, a couple weeks later.) K does his best to make me feel better, and I do feel a little better, though it doesn’t last.

So what happens when you quit? You meet some nice people. That’s always good. You feel terrible, but for me that’s nothing new; clinical depression means that the part of my brain that houses the factory of good feelings has been massively downsized. Once again, for the cheap seats in the back, with someone like me, I’m not depressed because of something; depression is the something. I don’t enjoy feeling terrible but most of the time I do, so when I can avoid it—when I can stop running at Mile 15 and not be in pain any more—sometimes that’s what I do. I quit.

This is not a rationalization or an excuse. I don’t have an “excuse,” not even my injury, since I’ve run through far worse pain than this; most every runner I know likely has done so. But the fact remains that I wasn’t physically strong enough to meet my goal and I wasn’t mentally capable of being content with a lesser goal—just finishing—so I gave up. The thing is, at the time, it didn’t feel like giving up; it felt like a very good decision. Several years ago around this time, it seemed like a very good decision for me to do the Big Quit, to give up on life entirely. I failed in my attempt (see? failure isn’t always a bad thing), and I’m glad now, but I can still remember the clarity of that choice, the way it seemed absolutely the right thing to do.

That took a grim turn, didn’t it. Welcome to my mind, folks. I don’t have any grand conclusions here. I haven’t given up on the pursuit of the BQ; I still think I’m capable of doing it. There’s a lot I’m capable of, some of which isn’t very pleasant. I am capable of quitting. I am also capable of continuing. I’m still here, after all.