*Disclaimer: This title not affiliated or plagiarized from “Shut Up +Run” the much more popular and entertaining blog by Beth Risdon* :)
This is a post about psychology. And pain. And pushing past that pain and liking it in the end-also called adaptation and badassery. Enjoy!
Ok, now that the disclaimer is outta the way (do we need disclaimers on blogs? Oh, well!)-
My previous post listed some glowing things about my workouts and how much fun I was having, etc., etc. Which was true, until last Tuesday, where I met my first ‘test’ of motivation and toughness. I had my first rough workout of the season….we all have ‘em. And by ‘rough’ I don’t mean a total fail, but it challenged me when I needed to be challenged, and forced me to reach into a level deeper than I’ve been operating on.
It started innocently enough, an easy warmup, cool temps (although humidity a bit more than I would like) and 2 x 1000, 2 x 800, 2 x 600 with 2 mins recovery. On paper I could tell it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, as I had only done 200s and 400s in lower volumes before with considerable success. The first 1000 went by well enough, with the second one faster than the first. Which is great, except I didn’t have much life in my legs or lungs that day. Chances are, I was too aggressive with my approaches with the longer intervals-likely because I haven’t done them in ages. Seriously-I can't remember when.
It was after staggering through my first 800 when my brain started to spasm-not so much my back or legs, but my thoughts were sputtering. I had missed the prescribed interval by a few seconds; which of course happens and wasn’t a big dea it itself, except it was 800 #1 and I wasn't firing on all cylinders. Crap. That ever happen to you? With my pulse elevated, my brain started feeding me these doubts that I was in over my head and I couldn’t run like this anymore; fight or flight, anyone!?....
....Maybe I should just shorten the workout-no harm done, right?, the gremlins told me- Yes, I was rather uncomfortable, but I fortunately realized that my posture was the running equivalent of a fist and the tension was contributing to the difficulty and feeding into the negativity. I realized I was letting the workout intimidate, but I was going to give it my best anyhow. We’ll call that an “override switch” moment: when doubts start to impair your judgement, you consciously make a switch in your mental approach to get through the situation. Ok, nerdy banter aside-what I basically did was tell myself to just shut up and run, Who cares if I am not getting my way right then.
The next 800 took some bargaining with myself, with the second 400 bringing my usual focus and calm back. Instead of focusing on how I SHOULD feel but don’t, I worked on being as efficient as possible. The end result, negative split 600s. I put the pain to good use so I would know what to do in a race if I feel like, well, death. Ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but whatever.
The biggest negativity override point was putting myself in a future situation, in this case my race on the 17th: I always do a quick review of what I have done to prepare and knowing I wussed out on a ladder sesh could affect my confidence. This was one of those days where you hold instead of fold, and I was immediately glad I did. Perseverance wins the day, right? I much prefer to remember toughing it out, even if not as fast as planned vs. bowing out. As a coach I know once said "If it were easy they'd call it football". :)
A wise sage who runs with us, Dave once mentioned that many of our workouts are not used necessarily to see the cliche of “where we’re at”; but to give us the stimulus to get us to where we need to be to reach our goals. Sometimes its not hitting the splits but putting in the effort that translates better to race day.
Long story short, I had my weekly track session this morning and had a much more enjoyable experience doing “miles in disguise”/300s knowing I had my “bad” session already out of the way.
Sometimes when we have bad workouts or even races, it helps to say to ourselves “well, that sucked; glad it’s outta the way”. Sometimes, it really is that simple.
We have more control than we think we do-all it takes is making that decision when we need to the most.
Stay the course.
5 comments:
I HATE that first workout of a cycle that isn't like the others. For some reason it always feels like a test. I almost always have one of those mental freak outs during them. I did my first substantial track workout this week, too- 800s. I ran the first two and what i thought my pace should be. (No wait, I ran what I wanted my pace to be. Hello, ego!) Midway through the third way I knew I had to back off or I would crash and burn. In the end, I finished a solid workout, but had to pack up my ego to allow it to happen.
Why do our brains make running complicated????
Fo realz!!
I know I can always pop over here for a little motivational kick in the butt!! Seriously, you rock and I am always inspired. I gave up on a long run yesterday at mile 5 because I just was tired of running. I got back on the horse today though and had much better results.
Keep kicking those track workout, girlie!! You're off to a great start to 2015!! :)
Why thank you!!
I'm glad my gibberish is helpful:) I'll keep writing as thing move forward. All the best in the New year!
What I find when I start running intervals again , is that the data ends up looking like a big hump! I always start out too hard, and it feels really easy for about 10 seconds.. It quickly goes away though. reality hits and I readjusted but I always try to have faith in what I've seen before . The more I do them, the better I get at them.
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