If you run, it's going to happen to you, sooner or later, you're going to have a bad workout, you're going to have a bad race and it's going to suck. I mean, that's kind of the nature of it, right? It's bad. It didn't go how you planned, sometimes catastrophically? Ask me how I know. But there is a great thing about having a bad race or a bad workout, and I want to share that with you today.
If you haven't been with me on the channel here before, I'm Jesse Funk, this is a show I call Runner's High where we talk about everything running, including why it's actually really great to have a bad race. So if you like running. Stick around. Subscribe. Hit that button over there. Tuesdays and Thursdays new episodes come out every single week.
So what is the great thing about having a bad race? Because you're saying to me, Jesse, I don't want to have a bad race. I want everything to go really, really well. And in the moment, it definitely feels like that, right? You don't want things to go poorly because when they go poorly and you feel bad. But the upside is is an opportunity to grow.
Because ultimately, although we want the race to go well and we want the opportunity to run maybe a best time or with a best friend and they get away from us, an opportunity to grow is sometimes what we need because it isn't just about the physicality of it. I often refer to the mental side of running the resilience that we can learn from running, and there's no better place than this little microcosm that we live in to learn about life skills.
And though that bad shit's going to happen sometimes, and we have to be resilient to get over that. And when we practice that in this kind of safe environment of running and the running community, when things go bad, it's an opportunity to grow and learn about how we can overcome this bad situation and know that we can move forward. But beyond that, there's actually a practical side of having this bad race that gives you that opportunity to grow.
Because when you have a bad race, what are you more likely to do? Figure out what went wrong, right? When you have a good race, you just go, "Huzza!" And then you move on, right? You don't even worry about it anymore. Everything was planned. You hit your PR, you go have your celebratory piece of cake or whatever it is you like to do, and then you move on with your life.
But what you should be doing in both cases is dissecting your race. When things go poorly, it's easier to do that, right? You go, man. What went wrong? What can I do to make this better, how can I do it better next time? And not only does that prepare you for the next race, which is awesome, but hopefully get you in the habit of dissecting that race so that you bring it as an opportunity both good and bad, no matter what the outcome of the race is, and that itself is an opportunity to grow.
Now, if you don't know because you haven't been on the channel before, or maybe you haven't checked out the other show, I do another show here on this channel. Again, subscribe called the Smart Athlete Podcast, where I talk to anybody from amateurs to Olympians that do all kinds of different sports and then also all have some cool career.
The overarching question I asked everybody from last season season three was "How do you stay motivated after failing to reach a goal?" And that really kind of encompasses this situation, right? We have a bad race. Why is it bad? Well, it didn't meet our expectations. Expectations, that's our goal, right? So I asked all of these people and again, amateurs to Olympians.
I had a number of Olympians on over this last season and the vast majority of responses, they all varied a little bit. So at the end of this video, I'm going to link to the compilation video. Absolutely going to check that out. Lots of really great words of wisdom there. But what are the overarching themes, if I had to distill these 46 interviews down into one answer, it's that. I don't worry about it. I just move on. These people, these high-performing individuals, they don't worry about it.
They have a bad race. Like I said, maybe look at what went wrong, maybe what went right, what can I do better? Can I do anything better? Because that's something to think about as well. Sometimes you just plain get beat. Maybe you wanted to be first, but somebody faster just showed up. All of these people really came down to this distillation of they figure out what the next thing is and they keep moving forward.
It's a habit with them. They don't simply say I had a bad race. I'm going to wallow in my misery. I think it's fine to accept that you feel bad. And to examine why do you feel bad and then say, Is there anything inside of my control that I can change if I can change it? Then I will. And if I can't, then you've got to let it go.
So there's this whole microcosm of an opportunity for growth within having a bad race, and it's the perfect breeding ground for us to become better as individuals. So I'd really love if you could share your bad race story. You've been around on the channel. If you listen to any number of podcast interviews I do. I talk about my worst race of my life, where I almost got my professional license in triathlon, but instead ended up in the E.R.. That's my bad race story. You can find it the number of places on the channel.
But share your bad race story down in the comments below. Give me your bad beats and then what you did. After that, you're going to want to check out this video it'll be on the screen here shortly. Where I interview, we had the interviews with all of those experts and their opinions on how to stay motivated after failing to reach a goal. So with that in mind, I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner's High.