A LETTER FROM CHRIS SUAREZ
RUN YOUR RACE
Running season is in full force across the country. For those that love the sport it can be a time of excitement for upcoming events, nervousness to stay healthy, and drive to hit goals and improve your craft.
Some of the biggest marathons in the world are coming up. Chicago is next week. New York is a month away. Berlin just finished up with a second win in a row for the Kenyan, Elide Kipchoge. He completed the 26.2 miles in 2 hours and 2 seconds, just one second behind his first place finish last year in the same city. His statement at the end of the race has been sitting with me: “The lesson is that your plan may not go according to what you want…every race is a learning lesson.”
I took some time to review my race times and practice times over the past couple years and I found an interesting, and somewhat concerning, fact. My practice runs were consistently faster and stronger than my competitive runs. Now as a competitive person, at first this upset me. It indicates I have not shown up as a strong competitor. I have put up great times in practice, but underperformed on race day.
As I thought about why, I realized I have been running to compete - not running for the love of the run. On race day, adrenaline kicks in, and instead of it providing more healthy energy, it just drives my competitiveness to perform or to beat my target.
Over the past training season I have used three words during every practice run. I have used three words as I encouraged friends to run alongside me. I have used three words for my friends that were heading out to run their marathons.
RUN. YOUR. RACE.
During the race it’s easy to push harder than you’ve pushed in your training - it’s the race after all. It’s easy to try to match the person’s speed next to you, or catch the person out ahead of you, or run with the pacer just a little quicker than you normally pace at. It’s you trying to show up. It’s you trying to impress yourself and those around you. It’s you running someone else’s race.
But we trained for ourselves. We didn’t train for the person next to us or out ahead of us. We trained because we set a personal goal or we love the race.
Perhaps I love running because it is so correlative to running a business. It’s easy to start doing something because someone next to us is doing it, or someone out ahead of us is doing it. It’s easy to start competing with someone we barely know, or over-competing even with ourselves. We can find ourselves chasing someone or something that really doesn’t mean anything to us. In the real estate industry this can lead to “buying business” in the quest for growth at all costs.
Whether going out to run a race, or going out to run a business, just run YOUR race. Be clear why you are out there, what you are trying to achieve, the goals you have committed to, and the pace at which you plan on getting there. If we fall into the trap of running someone else’s race, we will give up, lose interest, run out of gas, or burn out. Wake up each morning to run the race. Just make sure it's YOUR race.
Chris Suarez