The Long Distance Leader (Part 1)

How do you know if you are visionary enough?  How do you know if you are not underselling yourself and those you lead by setting goals that are too small and too safe?

Whenever I am asked about the next race I am preparing for I tend to get the same response: “You must be crazy!”  In fact, that has become the barometer measuring my vision and goals as an ultra distance runner.  I have chosen a path that only a few are willing to travel on, and therefore the response of people should be one of incredulity.  If as an ultra runner my race goals seem sensible then I am not challenging myself.

I would argue that the same principle applies in leadership.  Leaders have chosen, or been called to walk a path that few others do.  Our vision for the goals that we can achieve and help others to achieve, if visionary enough, should also provoke incredulity.

Runners are not joggers.  Leaders are not managers.  A jogger becomes a runner when they enter a race.  When a jogger is prepared to set goals and achieve them, they cross the line and become runners.

Managers are given a process to manage; leaders forge new paths and set visionary goals for managers to achieve.

By that definition the vision and goals we have as leaders should seem ambitious by the people that we lead.

There is a necessary counterbalance that needs to be considered; visionary goals do also need to be realistic. This is a fine line and where it is drawn is sometimes an art form.  The race goals I set myself need to take into account the training that will be required, the balance between home and work life, the costs involved and multiple other considerations like health, life events etc.

Likewise the goals we set in leadership can be too unrealistic.  They say that a leader who is too far in front of his people is just someone going for a walk.

I remember the painful experience of my first ever marathon.  I had been a recreational jogger, just heading out the front door a couple of times a week with not particular plan.  I just jogged.  When I thought I had jogged enough I thought that I was ready to take on the marathon.

The race itself was in Toowoomba, a country town in Queensland.  It was run on a Sunday morning, with a 6:30am start.  The field was very small, and there were only a few spectators at the start line.  The aid stations were few and far between.

At the start of the race I set off and found myself in a ‘bus’ of runners.  These ‘buses’ tend to get formed by runners who are aiming at a similar time.  After asking around they work out who is running at a particular pace per kilometre [this was news to me] and they help each other keep to the pace and achieve their end goal.  One fellow runner asked me what time I was planning on running.  I estimated 3 hours 35 minutes.  He told me that the ‘bus’ I was in were planning a 3 hours 15 minute finish and that in his opinion I needed to slow down and move back down the field a bit otherwise I wouldn’t make it.

I felt aggrieved by this assessment, and told him rather that I was feeling great and there was no need to slow down.  The course was looped and the marathon consisted of 4 loops.  After the second loop I felt that I needed to start reverting to the walk/run plan as I could feel disaster looming in my legs.  The ‘walk’ part of the walk/run started getting longer than the ‘run’ part of it.

By the time I began the fourth and final loop things were getting very bad.  At the 33km mark I suddenly hit it.  I hit that thing they talk about in running parlance; ‘The Wall’.  It isn’t something you can see, but it stops you as dead as a wall can.  I collapsed on the pavement and rolled into a gutter.  I distinctly remember lying face up in the gutter, staring at the tree and sky above me, questioning why I was putting myself through this madness. The residents of the street were tucked up in bed, none the wiser to the tragedy unfolding on their street.  Not even the sound of my dreams and hopes crashing woke them up.

There was nobody around who could help me at all, as the limited field had stretched out and there were no seconds at the aid tables.  I managed to limp through to the 36km mark and eventually found an ‘official’.  I made the critical decision to bail, and asked if he could arrange a vehicle to pick me up.  He didn’t have a mobile phone on him so he couldn’t help me.

He instructed me to sit down and wait until the end of the race, when he would be picked up.

I became aware of people staring at me from passing vehicles and my sense of humiliation grew.  I decided to rejoin the race and limped home those last 8km racked with cramps.  I got beaten by a woman in her seventies and in later years I was to suffer the indignity of hearing that even Oprah Winfrey ran faster than me in her first ever marathon!

My first ever marathon was thus a dismal failure.  When I got home and researched the art of marathon running on the internet it was almost as if I was reading material written about me, particularly the bit about ‘hitting the wall’.  Whilst the run itself was a failure, it proved to be the foundation of my distance running career which has since moved on to ultra distance events.

It taught me valuable lessons about setting realistic goals, training to achieve, building up a knowledge base, nutrition, pacing and all the other essential disciplines and principles involved in pushing the human body far beyond its natural capacities.  The failure generated an ever deeper passion to succeed and to set even higher goals.  My next marathon finish was over an hour to the better of my first, and I was hooked.

The added dimension of Christian Leadership with respects to vision and goals is that we are not alone to work these things out.  There are often times when God clearly lays something on our hearts and minds and this becomes the wisdom that leads us to formulate vision.  God provides us with the intuition we need and provides the drive to persevere and see through to the finish line.

Christendom is of course replete with many instances of God’s people claiming the Divine imprimatur on visions and goals they have cooked up themselves.  We only have to switch on our t.v.’s to see televangelists fleecing the flock to fund their opulent lifestyles and questionable ventures.

This is where the importance of holding our vision and goals up against the light of God’s discernment is critical for us.  We won’t always get it right either, and faith calls us to risk failing.  Thankfully, God’s grace can take account of where we have failed in trying to achieve visionary things, particularly when we have done so in good conscience.  I am thankful for the advice in Proverbs 3 and I hold on to the promise:

3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.

4 Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.