Hello, and here’s to the lies we tell ourselves.
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You’re reading 100 lessons, a newsletter about ultrarunning and white lies believing while grown-up race-day make-believe. Okay, here comes the cat to sit on me, we can begin.
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All the best lies are created for children. “A magical bearded stranger is going to come down the chimney and give you presents.” “This spoon of nondescript mush is an airplane.” “THIS WON’T HURT.” Charming deceptions for innocent minds, designed to delight, protect… and crumble forever upon contact with the skepticism and critical thinking skills required to function in a world where there are no magical strangers, spoons are really rather disappointing, and things most definitely hurt.
I’m thinking about this a couple of days before my first race of the season. It’s just a training race—a glorified long run in the buildup to my goal race later in the year. As is the accepted convention, I’ve made a T-shirt for myself with the words “It’s just a training race, lol” on it, and plan to verbally reiterate this to anybody and everybody on the day of the event.
Grown-ups get lied to, too, the thought continues. But, setting aside the obviously bad (as in, “malicious”) deceptions, even the white lies of adulthood simply aren’t as good. “My phone died.” “This looks good on you.” “I’ve read Infinite Jest.” Those are the sort of snoozers we start getting after we turn seven.1
The thing is, the race is much too long to be a training race, and it’s too close to my goal race. And, if I’m being honest, I do have a time goal in mind—achievable if I floor it on the runnable sections. That’s not how you do a training race.
I’m not, though. Being honest. Despite what it says on my awesome T-shirt, it’s not “just a training race, lol”; it’s “a big fat race-race, yikes emoji.”
But this isn’t about my race, nor is it about the little white lies we’re told as children. This is about the little white lies we grow up to tell ourselves.