Personal Records (Day Two)

In the working world, the first thing you think of when the letters “PR” are used is Public Relations. I still have trouble with this even to this day, thanks to 10+ years of cross country and track.

In running terms, a “PR” is your personal record. It’s the best time you have to date for whatever race you’re running. You have to be proud of your PR, its an extension of you. It is the absolute best you have done.

Its a benchmark. Cross Country and Track are very lonely sports once you get on the playing field. You’ve got people cheering for you and you’ve got competitors around you, but there is no break. You cannot pass the ball off and take a second to regain your composure. You can’t return to the huddle because something didn’t work and try to create another way to success. Its a constant, fluid, individual sport. When it comes to race time, you HAVE to trust yourself, your legs, your brain, because at the end of it, your success relies solely on your shoulders.

The PR exists so that you can compete with yourself. I always imagined it as a shadow. Depending upon my pace, it would be running ahead, next to, or behind me, but it was always with me. It was the one thing I was after the most.

If you push yourself to be better than you could ever be, you will simultaneously become better than those around you. That’s just how it works. If you work to just be better than the people you’re competing against, you will NEVER become better than yourself.

For years, thats how I functioned. I had my PR and it was great, but I was more focused on doing better than those around me. Proving that I had something. Always grasping at straws for ways to prove myself. I never stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, I should be focusing on what I could do to better who I was the day before and that doing so would lead me further.

I’ve always been a bit of an angry kid. Always with the chip on my shoulder. Never the best looking, strongest, fastest, tallest, smartest, etc. I always thought I could be though.

That entitlement is important. Even if it isn’t the case, you constantly have to think that you can become better. That you know its within you to do better than you previously had.

Obviously, I was misguided. Instead of trying to be smarter than I was yesterday, or faster than I had been in the last race, it was always trying to be smarter or faster than the people around me. By chance, sometimes it would improve me. Mostly, however, it was just a false result.

Compare it to cramming for a big test. All you’re doing is working to be better than the test, to outfox the teacher giving the test.

What do you learn from that? How are you bettering yourself?

You’re not. You’ll probably forget 95% of the information as soon as you drop that test off at the teachers desk and vacate the room.

If you took the time to read, study, and participate in class, you retain the information. You become smarter and more knowledgeable and, by effect, become better than the test that you’ll have to take weeks down the road.

Its with these ideas that I try to tackle this challenge, the Better Me Project. It finally, for me, isn’t about being better than the person next to me, or adding weight to the chip on my shoulder. It is just about becoming a better me than I was yesterday and being excited to become even better the next day.

It took me 24 years to realize that. Maybe it takes you longer to come to that realization. It doesn’t matter how long it takes in comparison to everyone else, it just matters that you get to that point. Again, better than YOU can be, not better than THEY can be.

At the end of every post, I’ll put up my PR’s and then compare whether I’m meeting them or not on a daily basis. This will exist as my shadow. Whether running beside me, behind me, or in front of me, that part of me will always be there to push me harder than I had previously gone. Some days will not meet my PR and that’s okay. Sometimes you hit benchmarks that are harder to pass than others. It doesn’t mean you fail on a daily basis, it just means you did extremely well on a certain day.

I still look at my cross country and track PR’s as a source of personal pride.

5k: 18:57 (sophomore year HS)
800m: 1:57 (junior year HS)
1600m: 5:02 (sophomore year HS)
400m: :50 (junior year HS)

Those were all set 7-8 years ago and I still look at them with pride. They were the best I could do. Maybe some day I will get back to those levels. I’d love to be there. If not, they still represent the best I have. There are others better than me out there and that’s fine. I still became better than I had been. My first 5k race as a freshman, I finished in 22:40. Within a year, I had bettered myself by almost 4 minutes. I kicked my own ass pretty well, which is awesome.

Day One PRs:
Books: Two chapters of Freakonomics
Conversations: +2 people
Exercise: 30 minutes walking
Caloric Intake: 1743 (which is duly impressive because I had Chipotle for dinner!)
Writing: 4 pages (2 of them being this piece)

Here’s to Day Two! Thanks for the support.