I’m writing this to remind myself as much as trying to inspire anyone who may read this!
As I’ve said before, last time I tried to increase my speed I ended up hating running! I quite quickly shaved a good amount of time off my 5k pb and was improving every time I went out. Brilliant!
Until I stopped improving. Every run I was staring at the pace on my watch, knowing it wasn’t quite enough to improve and therefore hating every second as "it wasn't good enough". I forgot to enjoy myself and may as well of been running on a tread mill staring at the dials, rather than taking in the scenery.
So this time, I'm determined to do it differently and in order to do that I need to change my thought process.
As with everything in life, there are so many factors which can affect your output aka your pace.
How much sleep you’ve had. Your mood. Your mindset. What other exercise you’ve done that week. What you’ve eaten. When you've eaten. The weather. Any injuries/niggles. Etc. Etc.
Not improving every time you try is not a reflection of your effort. It’s a reflection of your life. Which will sometimes favour your results and other times it won’t.
It’s important to remember that whilst trying to improve brilliant, not to get bogged down by numbers and forget to enjoy the process. This time round I'm not trying to run "fast" every time, but will throw a quick run in every so often to see how I'm doing. The rest of the time I will be running at my happy pace and just enjoy it. Maybe this will mean I don't improve as much but for me it's more important to enjoy running than to be fast (and it's not like I'm trying to get into the Olympics!)
And it's typical that pretty much as soon as I set myself this challenge and started this blog, I've been suffering from various niggles! First of all I wimped out of a jump at parkour and pulled my glute and then started suffering with a tightness/pain in my ankle! So not only is it important to enjoy the process, it's probably more important to listen to my body and not break myself more! This does mean that I haven't done as much running as I'd like (and I actually like running!) but hopefully soon I'll be niggle-free!
And I am a firm believer that some times you shouldn't try and run fast. You should slow down and just soak in the views...
It’s important to remember that whilst trying to improve brilliant, not to get bogged down by numbers and forget to enjoy the process. This time round I'm not trying to run "fast" every time, but will throw a quick run in every so often to see how I'm doing. The rest of the time I will be running at my happy pace and just enjoy it. Maybe this will mean I don't improve as much but for me it's more important to enjoy running than to be fast (and it's not like I'm trying to get into the Olympics!)
And it's typical that pretty much as soon as I set myself this challenge and started this blog, I've been suffering from various niggles! First of all I wimped out of a jump at parkour and pulled my glute and then started suffering with a tightness/pain in my ankle! So not only is it important to enjoy the process, it's probably more important to listen to my body and not break myself more! This does mean that I haven't done as much running as I'd like (and I actually like running!) but hopefully soon I'll be niggle-free!
And I am a firm believer that some times you shouldn't try and run fast. You should slow down and just soak in the views...
Very true Alison
ReplyDelete