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Friends,
My friend Mike sent me a note about the Fulda Marathon recently. We ran it together in Germany in the September 2003, and he had been thinking about that day. What he wrote stuck with me, and it's most of what I want to talk to you about this week.
A little setup first. Mike and I had worked together on the 1st Infantry Division staff in Würzburg, Germany and had deployed to Turkey together. Somewhere before that deployment, we got to talking about distance running, and he shared that he wanted to run a marathon. I had run one already, the Marine Corps in 2001, and was hungry for another shot. By the time we got home from Turkey, we had a plan. We picked Fulda, and we trained for months together, mostly along the Main River and through the Würzburg vineyards. Some of the best running of my life, honestly.
Race day, we ran together. Around mile eighteen, Mike hit the wall. I knew the feeling, because I'd been there myself two years earlier. I stayed with him. We walked some, we ran some, and we crossed the line a little over four hours, just missing our goal time.
Mike said I had exhibited "what I assume was a bottomless well of patience" when he hit his wall, and that we missed our four-hour goal by nine minutes.
I've been sitting with that for a little while. Because I think he's wrong, and I think the way he's wrong is actually the lesson.
I don't remember feeling impatient. Not at any point. Did I want us to hit our four-hour goal? Sure. But I wanted to be there for him during his first marathon more than I wanted the time. And the reason was simple. I had been there. I knew what the wall felt like. I had hit it on my first race, alone, and I didn't want him to. And, more importantly, we'd struggled on the same months-long journey to this race together, and together is how I wanted to finish it
So Mike experienced patience. I experienced something else. I experienced not being able to leave him out there, because I remembered too clearly what it felt like to be where he was.
That gap is what I keep coming back to.
Most of what looks from the outside like a leader's patience is, from the inside, just memory. We aren't summoning a virtue. We're remembering, vividly enough that impatience doesn't really get a chance.
And here's the harder part: I don't think most of us remember our junior years honestly. We remember the highlight reel. The big play. The presentation that landed. We forget the bad days, the mediocre days, and the days we just barely got through. Those days are the actual work, and they're what our junior people are living right now. If we're coaching them from our highlight reel, we're going to be impatient with them, because we've forgotten that we were exactly where they are, and most of the time we weren't great either.
Somewhere on your team right now, there's a Mike at mile eighteen. The question isn't whether you have the patience to stay with him. The question is whether you'll remember your own mile eighteen.
Who on your team is at their mile eighteen right now? And what does it cost you to stay with them?
Talk soon,
Ian
P.S. Next week: San Antonio, 2008. The race that taught me what I was actually capable of.
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