DNFing an Event or Race
Two children drawing with chalk on the street. The words say Start and Finish.
The dreaded DNF, Did Not Finish! Why is this person writing about DNFing? Because we need to talk about it so that instead of dreading the DNF we understand how to use it to our advantage. There are many different reasons why athletes DNF:
Injuries
It happens. Injuries can occur during the event, game, or race and even in training that we don’t know about and then show up in the middle of the race, game, or event
Illness
We are human and we can get sick. We can get a viral or bacterial infection right before our race or event. We hope that it does not happen, but it still can. We think that we can get through, but it turns out that we cannot.
Overexertion
The excitement or nerves build leading up to the race or event can cause us to go out too hard, which is made especially worse if there is extreme weather, and has potential repercussions like fatigue or heatstroke.
Mental challenges
Jumping into the sport psychology realm and the mental health world, athletes can experience mental fatigue, lack of motivation, self-defeating thoughts, or emotional distress.
Nutritional challenges
Think “bonking” or “hitting the wall” that can arise from inadequate nutrition and/or hydration.
Strategic decisions
An athlete makes a conscious decision to DNF in an event in order to focus on another one.
Unfavorable conditions
Different types of extreme weather can make participation unsafe.
Disqualification
This can also happen. Athletes can be disqualified because they unknowingly or knowingly violate the rules or accumulated technical infractions.
Take a look at this list. What would you add?
The list above is not all inclusive, but it does give us a place to start. While this post cannot cover every point there is to cover about DNFing, it will strive to at least introduce some ideas and come back in a later post with more.
Let’s call a spade a spade. It can feel really awful to DNF. You put in the hard work, did your training, and prepared yourself as best as you could. (The phrase, “as best as you could,” was very intentional because, to date, I have never heard anyone say that their training had gone absolutely perfectly. Things do come up in life that impact our training and practice. For example, you get the flu while training for a marathon and have to take a week off to rest and get better. It happens! DNFing can bring up many, potentially different emotions like anger, frustration, regret, shame, disappointment, relief, etc. It can also bring up a multitude of different thoughts like “I am a horrible athlete for DNFing.” or “I suck.” We are going to come back to this negative self-talk later in this post. These are overly simplistic examples because when we DNF it triggers us in many different ways and in different aspects of our lives.
So what do we do?
You acknowledge your thoughts and feelings. They are real. The challenge is to not get caught up in those thoughts and feelings, especially the thoughts that tear you down - the negative self-talk that tells you are not good enough, for example. Here is the funny thing… People, with the best of intentions, may try to comfort you and sometimes what they say can feel absolutely invalidating because they miss seeing you in the moment and what you are experiencing in hopes of trying to take away what you are feeling to try to make you feel better. Yes, that was a long run on sentence done intentionally in hopes of evoking a certain feeling. The more simple way of saying what was just written in this paragraph is that it is okay to grieve the loss of an experience of not finishing.
Next, as time passes and when you are ready, apply the Growth Mindset (Here is the blog post link to the previous post on the Growth Mindset) and use the DNF as a learning lesson to see what you can use to help you. This means looking at your DNF, not as a failure, but instead as a learning lesson that you can use moving forward. For example, maybe your nutrition was off so you “bonked.” Okay, that is something that you can work on in training and/or seek support from a nutritionist or coach, for example. These are things that you can control moving forward. This leads us to the next point, control the controllables. This is a phrase that is often used ad nauseam within the realm of sport and performance psychology. And, yet, it is still true. We can’t control if someone steals our equipment, but we hope that does not happen. We can control, for example, the self-talk that runs through our head. That can be worked on in training and/or with a sport and performance consultant.
In order to engage in this process, remember that you have to engage in non-judgmental self-reflection. This is where self-compassion also comes into play. It does not serve us to continually beat up on ourselves. That only tears us down. We can own up to our mistakes and challenges from a place of understanding. It is possible. And remember, DNFing an event, game, or race does not define you as a person or athlete. It is a piece of your story. So, if the negative self-talk like, “I suck,” comes into your head, for example, reframe that to something like, “I struggled today during the game and want to come back stronger.” You do not suck as a person and never will, no matter if you DNF again.
take action today moment:
Get into the habit of engaging in self-reflection after a race, game, or event and even consider the process of self-reflection in training. During this process, you can evaluate what went well, what was challenging, and can then begin to understand what thoughts and feelings arise naturally and which one’s you may want to change or strengthen. I strengthen is included because we often tend to focus on the challenges and forget about what went well. Make sure you look at both and strengthen the things you do well.