This article was first published in Issue 139 of our magazine
When was the last time you failed at something? For me it was last Thursday, by 10 watts in a threshold session. I’m not counting it though, because the file still turned green on TrainingPeaks (which users of the platform will recognise as a workout “completed as planned”). I also wasn’t overcome with despair for the entire week that followed, which is the more obvious sign this wasn’t true failure. I’m a failurephobe, you see.
A coach I work with picks a ‘quote of the week’ every Monday, and last week’s was ‘Failure = Feedback.’ This upset me. I find an encounter with that dreaded verb – to fail – ruinous. It’s not missing out on whatever target I hoped to achieve that upsets me, it’s the shame of realising I was wrong. Failure = Learning I Misjudged What I Was Capable Of, and what follows is an all consuming sense of shame. It feels like the meek and sensitive version of Katie has been tricked by a version ridden with delusional megalomania.
I know this isn’t a good state of affairs, and you should know this column isn’t self-help. Dear reader, you won’t be a more well rounded or better educated person by the end of our 800 word journey together. You might even come out the other end worse for it, contaminated by the neuroses of a 31-year-old Olympian. One must occupy one’s Sunday though, so take a risk and come with me on this. I’ve decided there are three categories of non-achievement. They are: diversions, unsuccessful trial runs, and failures. It’s only the third one that sends me to the chaise lounge, so I’m not as much of a lost cause as I seem.
Diversions are things like broken legs, dislocated shoulders, or the biggest commercial racing league your sport has, being cancelled by Warner Brothers. These really aren’t a big deal. We don’t blame ourselves when it rains, and nor should we blame ourselves when the climate of life takes a turn. It’s a pity that the large-scale burning of fossil fuels and subsequent disruption to global temperatures has disrupted my analogy there. Once upon a time, though, we didn’t need to blame ourselves when it rained. Assuming that CO2 emissions aren’t causing the laxity in my joints, I’m not taking blame for that either.
Often, I’m grateful for diversions. They are the non-achievements that teach you things you didn’t know you needed to learn. To encounter a diversion is to swim through waters teeming with unknown unknowns. Mother Teresa purportedly said, “I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” Diversions are finding out that He does. They are the things that don’t kill you, they make you stronger.
On to unsuccessful trial runs (UTRs). These are exactly what they say on the tin. A UTR is getting the amount of beetroot juice you can digest wrong, mis-executing a new tactic you’re trying in a race, or falling while trying to handstand. People interested in skill procurement champion this version of non-achievement as beneficial failure. I agree that it’s beneficial, but argue they’re fudging the meaning of the word failure.
Learning to tie your shoe laces isn’t a series of failures until you manage it. It’s accumulating the building blocks of a skill, then practicing the technique needed to cement those blocks together until you can. Trial runs are asking a question and unsuccessful trial runs, whether it’s the one you wanted or not, still give you an answer. I can’t claim to enjoy them as much as some people do, but they’re the sweat that makes success taste sweeter. They’re the salt that gives caramel a deeper flavour.
We come now, at last, to the rotter of our trio: true failure. Your driving test, your final exams, an Olympic final. In fact, the word “final” appearing in any task you undertake is a warning that true failure may be on the horizon. Of course this is where the opportunity for true success also lies. It’s not a trial run. It’s a bet you’ve placed on yourself, staking self-worth in place of poker chips. It’s the real deal.
And when it results in an outcome contrary to my aims, I refuse to be grateful for the “feedback”. True success makes me feel like a bumblebee with a belly full of nectar. True failure makes me feel like a human being called Katie Archibald who just failed. It’s a hideous state to embody, and so I take to the floor of my bedroom until it passes. Leave me there, please, and don’t come back until you have a better quote of the week.
