The DNF Monster

My last race was a DNF, which is the polite way to say “Did Not Finish”. Drop out, quit, give up; no matter how you say DNF, it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. Sure even professionals have done it, including Allan Webb in the Carlsbad 5000 recently and Paula Radcliffe in the 2004 Olympic marathon, to name just two. The finish line area is just not as festive and fun. You stare blankly listening to people recounting the good, the bad and the ugly of their race. Sure, some of them had a terrible race, but at least they finished. Now you don’t even feel like wearing the stupid race t-shirt; it goes right into the cleaning rag pile.

For many races, you prepare for months and sacrifice time and money to get to starting line. Perhaps you had a goal in mind, dreamed of a PR, or just wanted to finish. But you probably didn’t think about packing it in. Most of us don’t mentally prepare for it. We don’t want to even consider it. A DNF never stands for something good; an injury, equipment malfunction, accident, having a “bad” day, or, worst of all, total body and mind collapse.

I had an injury. Once home, showered, and fed I sat back and began to decipher the DNF. Every race tells you something. It amplifies your training, your life, your stresses, and everything you thought you could ignore and hope that it goes away. In my case I reinjured a hamstring. A race will find your weak spot and attacked it unmercifully. Why it acted up was the million dollar question? It was doing fine before the race. I’m not sure, but I did break one of the fundamental rules of racing—changing equipment, my bike, too close to a race. Injury, breaking down, and even most accidents, point to ignoring what our mind and body are trying to tell us. Slow down and heal, prepare better, eat healthy, diffuse the stress, set proper goals, and many other insightful things, if we would just listen.

We are just programmed to hate quitting. Our forefathers would have been trampled by that Mastodon if they gave up. And we all have seen athletes fight through incredible pain to compete. Pain is fear leaving the body, right? So how do you know when to pack it in or to fight through the pain? Good question. I think that we intuitively know when we can’t go on or it’s not worth the possibility of long term “downtime” to achieve the short term goal of finishing. Often we choose to ignore it and pay the consequences. I had made my goal of a good swim segment and finishing wasn’t worth inflicting further damage. I have learned, the hard way, that the higher you climb the age group ladder, the longer it takes to recovery from an injury. Humans can do incredible things when we put our minds to it. And most of the time we can do much more than we realize and should fight through our mental and physical barriers, but not this time for me. I hope that time does heal all, and helps minimize the distance between this Did Not Finish and the next Did Not Fail.