Career lessons from the London marathon
Go at your own pace, run your own race...
Every year, the London Marathon inspires an idea for something to write. Not least because (yes, I’m one of ‘those people’), I did the marathon in 2005. So I can truly say I know how it feels to run the course. I can also say ‘never again!’. And that leads me to today’s missive.
There are so many lessons to be learned from the marathon, about tenacity, guts, glory, about staying the course. In fact I wrote last year about how freelancing is like a marathon.
But this year I have a different angle that keeps running (of course) around my brain: It’s ok to give up, to change direction and to say something isn’t working for us any more. The lesson is also that it’s ok to be slow, to pause, to want to give up. Or to decide that you will give up!
We don’t have to stick to one career ‘marathon’ and we can change the way we run our career/work/business race.
When I ran the marathon (I say ran, from mile 17 it was walk/run, although I ran across the finish line, a particular goal I’d set myself), I was a ‘runner’. Although, running didn’t come naturally to me. I was never a gazelle type, it was always a challenge to pound the pavement for me.
It was about the medals as well as the endorphins. I liked running because running meant goals, races, and ‘personal best’ times and it also had a brilliant element of friendship and teamwork as I did all that running with two of my best pals.
But deep down, I never felt like a runner. I see the park runners now, on a Saturday, and I feel a pang of ‘why aren’t I into that anymore?’. I also look at them, in the same way I look back at some of my old jobs, and think ‘What the…? No way!’
Recently, someone at work asked me if I fancied coming to a lunchtime run club and I said ‘my running days are over’ like I’m Paula Radcliffe… (I did meet her once, at a Race for Life press event!)
I began to think about how I used to be a ‘runner’, and now I’m not. How saying ‘used to be’ insinuated that I’d given up, or had to stop running, because of a particular reason.
The real reason is that I decided running isn’t for me. Not forever. It was a great phase, don’t get me wrong. But, like Shakira, my hips don’t lie and they also don’t like running.
And of course, it made me think about the similarities with our career paths.
It’s easy to say careers are a marathon, not a sprint, but that’s not always true. And we don’t have to stay on the same course, or path, the whole time.
For some people, there is chopping and changing - I know there has been for me. It’s not been one long slog it’s been a series of sprints, 10ks, and the odd triathlon of jobs - freelancing, staffing, moving out of journalism and then into coaching.
Career ‘journeys’ can be a series of expeditions, or they can be one long road - I have friends who have been in jobs 18, 20 years. To me, that feels full-on, but then I’m the kind of person who can change jobs fast, and freelancing taught me to jump between contracts deftly at times.
The biggest lesson from the marathon when it comes to comparison with careers, is, for me this year (19 years since I completed the course), that you can always shout about your achievements, but while we run along side each other, we’re all in our own race bubble. We’re all on our own particular course with our own goals, setting our own pace. At the same time, we’re not alone - you can start to see why people get a buzz from those runs, right…
And if you need more inspiration to run your own race, here’s a round up of the people who came last at the end of the marathon, with the help of tailwalkers - amazing!
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