*The Debatewise Blog
What running has taught me - part 3
A lot of personal change is difficult to measure. The problem is one of comparison; it’s hard to say if our approach today is very different to the one six months ago because all we really do is compare it to last week. And because most of us don’t change much in a week the tendency is to think we’re not changing at all.This is not true with the running. In October I had trouble staying on a treadmill for more than a minute. I kid you not, one minute. My first run wasn't that much better. The manual said to take walking breaks as necessary, I took two, the first a whole seven minutes and half a mile into the run. Last Sunday I ran for three hours.
Progress has been achieved by following the manual. I’ve relished the boundaries it gave and felt reassured by the knowledge if I just stayed within them I’d finish the marathon fine. They’ve pushed to just the right degree, not so hard I want to quit, or so little I get no reward. And crucially they’ve given me a clear record of how far I’ve come.
However, unless accompanied by a regimental personal trainer the problem with all such manuals is they’re subject to interpretation. Which is a problem for someone who’s a bit too competitive with themselves, who always feels they should do a little more and who fails to account for changes in circumstance, as I found to my cost on Sunday.
Recent deadlines have seen me not eating or sleeping enough, which wasn’t ideal preparation for going on a 17 mile run with someone significantly faster than me. I still would have been fine had I told him I was tired and wanted to go slow. Instead I tried to keep up and allowed pride to get in the way when it started to hurt. If that weren’t enough, I cleverly clipped my toenails a little too close the night before too.
Boy did I suffer. The last seven miles were hard, the last two agonising. His schedule had him running 18 miles, I said I'd do the extra mile to keep him company. But for the first time in five months I couldn't keep my promise and stopped as soon as I hit the 17 mile mark. Which actually was the first thing I did right all day.
So what have I learned this week. That the point of boundaries is not to break them. That when it comes to change you can’t know where you are unless you know where you were. That some days it’s okay to go slow because improvement doesn't travel along a smooth trajectory. Oh and to be careful with those clippers.