By HPRS Staff Columnist Jacob Stevens

“Success and failure are 100% mental.   One person’s idea of success might seem like a complete failure to someone else. You must establish your own vision of what it means to be unstoppable, you can’t let anyone else do that for you.” -Tim Grover

The term success is a loaded term indeed; I am not certain that this is a word that can be defined at all and in fact, have come to believe over the years that success is an abstract concept; a highly personalized and highly individualized idea. Traditionally, we associate success with professional success: a college degree, a good job, a good salary, a nice car, a nice watch, etc., or we may be a little more “forward thinking” and see being successful as being a good person which we define as being nice to our coworkers, going to church on Sunday, volunteering at the local food bank, holding open the door for the old man with a walker at the grocery store, or raising children who make good grades…well, sorry to break it to you kids but…that is all bullshit.

Quite frankly, no one gives a shit how much money you make, what type of car you drive, that you lead the local boy scout troupe, or that you held the door open for Mr. Walker when you were in a hurry and didn’t really have time. The fact of the matter is that, by and large, we come up with an idea of what success is and each individual, at some point in their life, judges themselves and everyone else by it; they then inevitably realize that they aren’t happy and don’t really care what the Jones’ are doing and are then left scrambling to figure out “what it all means and what life is about” which usually leaves one feeling lost, empty, and searching. Sound familiar?

I recently had an experience in which “keeping up with the Jones’s” almost ruined what should have been an absolutely amazing accomplishment and something I am incredibly proud of. I undertook the Dreadmill 48 Hour Endurance Challenge recently and if you haven’t heard about it or don’t know what it is, I can easily and quickly describe it for you: a living nightmare. As you probably guessed by the name of this event, it is done entirely on a treadmill and there are two races: distance for time, i.e. 100 miles as fast as you can, or time for distance, i.e. as many miles as you can run in 48 hours. I chose the former: 100 miles on a treadmill.

I’ll change the times to not allow for any comparison as well as the name of my friend so that he doesn’t know that I am writing about him behind his back :P. The way the virtual race works is from the moment you start you are in constant contact with the Race Director and have 48 hours to complete the 100 miles; everything is meticulously validated and verified. I had intentionally trained for this event and during a 7-week training block I did everything from increase my speed and rank the treadmills at the gym so as to use the best ones, to figuring out the most efficient way to take in nutrition and hydration as well as go to the bathroom. During this preparation I came up with a plan and had a pretty decent idea of what I was capable of, we’ll say sub-25 hours, sub-24:40 if things went perfectly. A few days before the event I was listening to a podcast in which my friend Mike was a guest and he nonchalantly stated that one of his goals for the next year or two was to go back to working on speed and run a sub-24 hour 100 miler … ironically exactly one hour faster than what I was shooting for, I said to myself, “boy that is fast” and never gave it a second thought.

As my race progressed and I started to realize I had something special happening I began to get excited because I was within reach of my goals…both of them! As the final tenths of a mile ticked by, I pressed the stop key at exactly 100.0 miles and 24:52:00! I should have been ecstatic, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed…you see I had subconsciously turned Mike’s goal into mine. Somehow in my mind I didn’t run 6 hours faster than my personal best on the trails and accomplished all my goals and achieved success…I was 53 minutes slower than what Mike is going to do, which meant I wasn’t as good as Mike, which meant I wasn’t good, which meant I wasn’t good enough. I turned one of the greatest performances of my ultrarunning career into a disappointment because I was judging myself based on someone else’s personal goal and definition of success.

We must define what success means to us individually, personalize it, and only then will we start to have feelings of accomplishment and achievement once OUR idea of success is starting to precipitate. Judging yourself by someone else’s definition of success will inevitably lead to heartache, failure, and depression 100% of the time. No one can ever be a better you, so it is important that we begin to define success as we inherently see it and begin to judge ourselves based on the values and milestones that are important to us … this is where personal growth and development really begin to manifest themselves positively in our lives.

Contrary to what your eyes may be telling you, these are both images of success to me.

One of the most beautiful things about trail running is that “success” in trail running is not only open for interpretation but incredibly individualized. Whether you are new to our community or a seasoned veteran I implore you to really look into yourself and define what success in trail running, or anything else for that matter, means to you. It could be a personal record at a certain distance, stepping up to a new distance, committing to run once a week, or even a commitment to give back more this year. Define success, write it down, and make a commitment to yourself to work toward it in 2020.

The Human Potential Running Series is not just a series that provides an outlet to get your trail racing fix or an avenue for me to throw in my two cents but it is a place where we genuinely care about YOUR wellbeing and YOUR success, however you define it. So, browse through our races which includes distances from 10 miles all the way up 200 miles, check out our articles and the Ultra Stories podcast, and let’s achieve success together!

Define success, write it down, leave a comment, sign up for a race, or volunteer at an event, but, and this is the important thing; do SOMETHING and MOVE FORWARD because YOU ARE ENOUGH, YOU ARE AMAZING, and YOU WILL BE SUCCESSFUL!