When we checked out of our hotel at Leadville, the last thing I did was take down the BELIEVE sign I’d hung on the bathroom mirror. (A nod to Ted Lasso, if you haven’t watched it.) It felt… well, it felt crappy, to be honest. Obviously, regardless of the race outcome, that sign had to come down before we left, but taking it down after my race went the way it did just hurt. But that was cleaning a hotel room, not a huge deal. Then, we got home and I realized how many remanents of my failed goal were kicking around.
On my laptop alone, my entire goal spreadsheet for the year was half Leadville info, and even once I moved that off of the main page now that it had come and gone, I was left with my vision board for the year featuring that finish line. The altitude tent is sitting in our room, though thankfully we took it down before we left. There are countless little reminders as I unpack and have to pour out full bladders of Tailwind that’s now been sitting in a hot van for a few days. (Honestly, the cost of that is also a pang on my budget-conscious heart.)
Not getting your goal sucks. Being reminded of it sucks. It’s a different kind of mourning than it was the day after the race, because now it’s these mean little nudges in my self-talk that are pointing out this failure in tiny ways that are harder than the big picture in some ways.
I’ve been fairly positive on the whole experience, and I genuinely am grateful for so much, from my ankle just being a bad sprain and not a break to how many people reached out. There’s even part of me that’s grateful for an injury in-race rather than the race going poorly because I bonked, popped or faded. It was an uncontrollable, and that’s easier to swallow. But the fact remains that I had this huge goal for the last few years, one that I was seriously pursuing for the past two years, and I didn’t make it. I didn’t even make my C or D goal in it. And the reminders of that are painful.
I think it’s okay to hold two things in your mind and heart. It’s okay to be okay, and it’s okay to also be sad and really not want to look at that goal list right now.
But all of that said, would I do anything differently? Would I set myself up for failure by not putting up the signs, making the vision board, writing down the goal? Hell, no.
What I am reminding myself to do, though, is to not get stressed about what to replace all of these ghosts of goal-setting with just yet. I’m purposely not looking at 2025 race dates or making any new plans. I think it’s incredibly tempting, as we take down the reminders of our previous goal, to start immediately refilling that space with something new. And I definitely will—but I’m going to take my time figuring out what that is.
