What's the Win?

When you’re a coach, it’s important think about how you want to model your team. What kind of culture do you want to build?

What do we value? What kind of person do we want to attract to the team?

Are we about winning? Being fast(er)? Simply having fun? What does “having fun” translate to on the squad?

I’ve found this permeates to how we talk about athletes’ and their race performances when sharing results on social media. It’s a delicate balance. We want to celebrate the accomplishment at the base level — an athlete achieved something that many people won’t even attempt. That’s a WIN by itself. We want to acknowledge the struggle, not just the visceral race-day performance. I’m talking about the daily juggling and war within that often keeps us from reaching our potential. And, in the rarefied instances of a podium placement or personal best, we want to share that too.

My personal goal is to give as much equal weighting to all facets of these performances.

Our Good Wolf culture values the journey as much as the destination.

The race itself is just a snapshot of the journey.

This allows a great race performance to be viewed with a humble lens — there’s always more to improve upon.

And, we can understand and hopefully better frame an athlete’s performance when they’re disappointed.

What do you value as an athlete? Are you framing your race performances accordingly? Do your values align with your coaches and team’s?

If they do, you may be winning far more often than you realize.