Lessons from a 7.5k race

Because we all need someone like me to turn simple things into deep life lessons.

Getting started with this article feels much like how I felt before running a 7.5k race (after some encouragement from my running club, Running Ibiza) with zero runs under my belt in the past six months: hesitant. Hesitant because I wasn’t sure I had the words to sum up what I wanted to say. I’ve been feeling a bit disconnected recently, from pretty much everything, and I think this run taught me precisely why.

At the start of the race, I thought, “Well, I’ll put my headphones in for a little motivation to get me going.” But within ten seconds, one of them fell out (first lesson: check headphones are in your ears properly before you begin running). Since it was a race, I didn’t want to spend my first moments searching through the grass on the sidelines for a missing earbud, so I just kept going, without my musical motivation, hoping I’d somehow make it through. Pretty much my mantra for life.

What’s interesting about this run is what it taught me about life and about myself (only I would turn a 7.5k race into a deep life lesson 😂). I tend to compare myself to others, not necessarily in terms of what they have, but in the speed at which they do things, the ease with which they seem to achieve. I’ve always noticed this about myself and often resisted it. I cried when I didn’t get the first-class degree I had dreamed of. I couldn’t understand why, despite training just as hard with my CrossFit group, I could never lift the same weight or build as much muscle. I never understood why I couldn’t manage life the way others seemed to, just having it all together. And don’t get me wrong, I know that’s a cliché thing to say, but in many ways, it feels true.

I’ve never held down a full-time job that wasn’t my own business for longer than six months (unless you count my eight-month stint on a solar farm, but that’s for another article). I could never quite manage the balance of travelling, saving, working, and taking care of my emotional, physical, and mental well-being.

In my head, I just couldn’t seem to make life work the way others did, so I thought I needed to work harder, push more.

And now, after five years as an entrepreneur, I still don’t have anything that fits society’s definition of success. Most days, I question: “Is what I do enough?” I spin words together magically with poetry, yet in my head, all I hear is, “Well, that’s not going to pay the bills, is it?” There’s truth in that, and there’s also sadness because what I’m naturally good at doesn’t have a clear path. I’m carving it myself, which means I fail, fall over, and lose my way, a lot.

Back to the race.

As I ran, I felt the usual apprehension and rejection (crazy how we experience rejection that isn’t even rejection, right?) when people passed me. I needed to slow my pace at points when I probably should have been speeding up. My hair annoyed me. I felt a little sad about losing my headphones. But I kept running.

It was in both the desire and the physical act of continuing that something shifted (not that stopping wouldn’t have brought a lot of realisations, but it was my goal to continue if I physically could).

This wasn’t just a race; it was an experience asking me to change my approach to my entire life. And it sounds simple, but the depth of the realisation hit me in a way I hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t about slowing down or speeding up, it was about going at my pace in that moment. It was about listening to my body, my heart, my gut, my soul, my mind. It was about allowing my pace to be one that all parts of me could get on board with. It was about working with what I had, not against it. Working with what was occurring around me, not because of or against it.

It didn’t feel so disheartening to watch runners go by anymore; it became more neutral. I started to see the situation not through the lens of rejection or comparison, but rather the reality of the situation I was experiencing. These were simply different humans, with different experiences, different abilities, and different paces. Not better, not worse, just different. People I didn’t need to adjust to, feel rejected by, compare to, or even feel inspired by, but instead, simply people I was sharing an experience with. And there was joy in that alone.

Maybe we’d find a lot more peace if we could see and experience life that way. We won’t get it perfect all the time, but what if we could always return to that knowing—that the purpose is to be who we are, and, to journey alongside people as who they are? Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of my life looking at others to determine how I should ‘run’—both in fitness and metaphorically in life—instead of letting myself set the pace, and it’s not been that enjoyable.

(Back to how I was feeling) At another point whilst I was running, I tried to block out the disheartening feeling so that I could set my pace. I treated the other runners like background noise, refusing to acknowledge they were present. It became me against me. But that didn’t work either. How could I block out the noise when it was all around me? It’s the same as being an entrepreneur—how can I ignore the accomplishments of others when it’s everywhere?

So, I did what I usually do when faced with discomfort, both emotional and physical, I let myself feel it fully while using the tools and resources I had to support me. I immersed myself in the experience without trying to block it out or make it so heavy that it became my entire identity. I told myself, “If we’re going to keep going (which I wanted to do), we’re going to fully experience this for what it is”, not what I want it to be, or what I think it should be. I let myself experience who I was in that moment, not the idea I created of who I should’ve been.

That shift, again, changed a lot. I started to run at a pace that sat on the edge of my comfort zone, not so far outside of it that I’d risk injury or giving up, but just enough to push myself. I found a balance between what felt good and what challenged me. And for me, that meant continuing my pace without walking (my own personal goal).

By the time I finished the race—not in first place, not in last—I felt happy with my pace, my time, my shift in perspective, and the lessons the experience had given me (not so happy with the not-so attractive crossing the line photo 😂).

It showed me what I was capable of and that, if I wanted to, I could both continue at my pace and expand that capability through training and practice. Just as I can as an entrepreneur, I can go at my own pace and acquire knowledge that helps me feel more resourced at that pace, tools to adjust my pace, to deepen the experience. But what isn’t going to get me anywhere at all is pushing myself beyond where I am right now in a way that’s fuelled by doubt, thinking I’m not good enough, trying to be better because I think I should, or comparing myself to others.

Donna, from my running group, summed it up perfectly during our post-race tortilla:

The food made it worth it

“Comparison is the thief of happiness.”

And she’s right.

I was comparing myself to others and getting nowhere. I was suppressing how I truly felt and what I needed in that moment, and getting nowhere. I was imagining how much more prepared I could have been, how much better I could have done, and getting nowhere. But when I became fully present with my experience (meaning I allowed myself to feel and think everything without making it my entire identity/100% the total truth), when I allowed myself to learn and let that learning resource me, when I allowed those around me to simply be people I was sharing this journey with, I was finally getting somewhere.

We’re so quick to tell ourselves, “Don’t feel that” or “Don’t experience that.” But the truth is, we are feeling it. And the more we push it away, the more we pile layers on top of our discomfort. We either end up wanting to give up entirely, or we exhaust ourselves trying to ‘overcome’ it, only to burn out and be forced to stop anyway.

So maybe this race was teaching me two things.

1. Life isn’t about pushing through at all costs. That it’s okay to go at your own pace, or even stop entirely. I watched one of my friends decide to leave the race right before the end because she saw the police about to leave a ticket on her car (much better move than completing the race). I watched people who clearly had an injury slow down. And, sometimes, it’s about using the resources you have to get where you want to go without shame in that. I watched those who had it in them from their training run faster and go on to achieve their PBs. Today, I experienced myself deciding to be cool about achieving a result that, in the past, I would’ve called ‘average’, but now I see it as simply exactly where it was. And I felt happy about it because I honoured where I was. I honoured my pace. And that is what feels most true for me right now.

2. Each of us is so different—with different goals, visions, ideas, thoughts, feelings, experiences, and histories. Everything is so different, so to look to others to determine how your experience should be is both exhausting and unlikely to get you where you really want to go, in the way you want to get there. To feel resourced by those around you, to be on the journey with them, is far more enjoyable and likely to be more fulfilling.

But like I said, we are going to feel these feelings, we are going to think these thoughts. I’m definitely going to compare myself to others again, but what I have now is the clarity that it doesn’t have to be true. It doesn’t need to take me away from myself. A far better way (if you do want to expand your ability where you’re able to) is to learn from people, to acquire knowledge and training from those who still give you the space to do it your way.

And honestly, I think that’s why I’ve been able to arrive at this realisation, because of the awesome people I’ve come to run with in Running Ibiza over the past four years. The acceptance and space that Donna creates through running—allowing people to come as they are, the person they are, the age they are, the culture they’re from—but also the ability to just be at their own level, enjoy what running has to offer in a way unique to them, yet still provide them with the knowledge to deepen their ability, if that’s something they wish to do.

Maybe we should apply the ethos of the Running Ibiza to our lives, and perhaps we’d all experience a little more peace—not only with ourselves and our abilities but with others and theirs. Maybe then, comparison wouldn’t be a thing because our differences would be what make us unique.

And back to the beginning of this article, why I’ve been feeling disconnected. I guess it’s because I was seeing different as separate.

I’m sure there’s more I want to tell you about it in this article, but perhaps those things are for another time.

See you soon.

with love,

Emma

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This article is part of my Sunday Spotlight series, with these articles, it’s my intention to shine the light on the amazing people and organisations that have impacted my life in awesome ways.

💛 You can support the work of this post further, by booking a run with Running Ibiza when you're next in Ibiza. You can find all of the information on Donna's website and Instagram.