I had one of those moments today where running and life questions intersected and morphed together. As I’ve dragged myself into this marathon training cycle, I’ve been trying to be more mindful of the types of running I should be doing, the paces I should be respecting and the distances I should not be overreaching.
I had the most loveliest of long runs yesterday with one of my oldest and most faithful running buddies, Jody. As you know, what is said on the run stays on the run, but I want to share some of what we talked about without divulging the specific details. It was a rather difficult week for those of us that work with student athletes and youth in different capacities. We talked about the pressures and dangers our high flyers in school deal with when they leave grade 12, the challenges of high school sport, the importance of letting our children/students lead us to where they want to go….and to balance needing to stay out of their way and guide them with our experiences. We also talked about our how scary our own adventures and opportunities even at our advanced ages can be. The juxtaposition of our deep conversations, really made me think about how vulnerable we all are when we’re learning something new, experiencing new adventures or embarking on new career explorations. And then to add to it Tina Muir had David Epstein as a guest on her podcast this week. His work on youth; early specialization vs generalization; and making the obvious link to the importance of cross-training…this was a run that had a tonne of potential blog possibilities.
Then the Sunday recovery run was on deck….
What is the purpose of this run today?
This question struck me during my recovery run this morning. It was a pretty typical recovery run in that it went according to Coach’s advice that you know you’re doing it right when the first third is “ugh”, the second third is “meh” and the third third is “OK”. Actually, those are my descriptors as Coach Erin is much more eloquent than that ;). Early on, during the most difficult part of the recovery, I began having those doubtful training thoughts. This is harder than it should be. I’m coming off a down week and I had a short long run of 18K yesterday….why is this so hard. Maybe I’m not ready to train for a marathon…AGAIN! The thoughts were about to spiral when I thought about the purpose of a recovery run. But it wasn’t working. So then I went to the science Coach talked about and went deeper into the why and started to imagine my muscles getting what they needed. This calmed me and then it struck me that I needed to slightly change the question into something more action-oriented.
It’s really about : How purposeful are you being in your run today?
Once I took control of the purpose, I felt myself go through each one of those stages of the recovery run. For me, this is one of my biggest challenges, it is time that I take all of the advice, reading and expertise that I seek and receive to bring a bit of me into this. It’s time to be purposeful. We all know that we can follow advice, paces, times, practice, etc. But how much do we actually act on it purposefully?
While today is but a single action, I’m beginning to see that for me it is not enough to simply know the purpose, but to be more active in acting this purpose purposefully. I’m still freaking out a bit (maybe a lot) that I’m actually in a FULL MARATHON training cycle. This was not my plan 3 years ago, but here I am…NYC here I come!
Without belabouring the point…..how can this lesson not be applied to anything else in our lives ?