Flashes of Panic

After the race, Dan Browne was in the media center discussing his race. Browne ran the Athens Olympic marathon, and was coming back for a pretty tough double (though Meb Keflezighi had a similar challenge and finished second in both races.) Browne was actually reported as a DNF around midway through the race, but he kept plugging and ended up finishing twenty-second.

The first interesting part was that place. He was never a part of the massive, freewheeling blob of fifteen to twenty which tends to dominate the Brooklyn and Queens parts of New York; he must have been dropped fairly early in the race. But when the pack hits First Avenue and someone snaps the elastic band which is holding them all together, they scatter, and if you’re still in the back and feeling good, you can pick up a lot of roadkill. On television, you see the same faces being winnowed down to a winner, but when you look at the results it’s shocking to see how far back someone can fall after being dropped by that lead pack, and how well someone else can finish without ever having their face on the screen. Probably half the runners in the pack halfway through the race didn’t finish. They really go for broke.

The next interesting part was his explanation of how quitting was never an option in his mind. I was turning that over on the drive home, thinking about his morning and mine, and particularly different mindsets, considering that I have dropped out of two of the five marathons I’ve started. We both set out on a task, and we both completed it, but Browne completed his task by being stubborn, tenacious, or both. He stuck to his original approach and persevered.

I, on the other hand, refused to spend much time pursuing avenues which weren’t working. I abandoned probably four or five alternate courses of action before finding one that works. Frustration, for me, isn’t when something doesn’t work; it’s when I need to go far down my list of fall-back positions. Browne has no fall-back positions.