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Fear need not apply

Fear need not apply

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Ugh, apparently I managed to screw things up on this little corner of the internet last week; it seems that I didn’t save my post (or something), which makes it look like I missed a week of writing for the first time since last summer. Dang! No worries: I just republished (or published for the first time, I guess?) last week’s post, so consider this one a bonus … or something. Anyway. Certainly no one cares about this as much as me.

Training has been going well for Big Sur and Mountains to Beach. I am having a lot of fun and am enjoying the grind. Right now, it doesn’t look like I’ll have a lot of racing opportunities before The Big One — kinda like how it unfolded last year, just due to weekend commitments between now and then — but that’s okay. I’ll figure it out. It’s not the end of the world.

Running can become fairly monotonous if we let it. It’s super easy to run the same routes, and the same paces, at the same times of day, on the same days of the week over and over again. Aside from being boring as hell and predictable (which, unfortunately, is something that we have to think about trying to avoid for fear of creepers and stalkers), that type of running is pretty self-limiting. 

That’s not to say that every run needs to be otherworldly awesome and life-changing or anything like that, but there’s something to be said for variety. Different routes, different training partners, different speeds: keeping things spicy can make what can otherwise be a tedious process much more enjoyable (on a completely different level). 

all smiles! so happy that the timing worked out and we all ran into each other Sunday morning. The ranger wouldn’t let us in the main entrance, so Plan B it was.

I think that’s why I like marathon training. At its heart, it’s just a lot of running, yes, but it’s also a lot of different types of running. It’s pretty easy to squeeze in a fair bit of variety each week; it’s rare that I repeat myself. 

I find all of this extremely liberating. When I don’t run the same thing twice, it’s pretty hard to compare one day’s results to another. It forces me to focus on the run I’m in right here, right now, and completely immerse myself and my energies in it. I used to get so in my own head about my workouts — or really, anything that wasn’t an easy run — and it definitely lessened the enjoyment aspect of training. I was constantly comparing to the shape I was in last year, last month, whatever or the shape I **wanted** to be in.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t measure up, and yeah… failure’s not flattering, as NFG reminds us.

These days, all I care about is the run I’m in the throes of doing. It removes the fear element of the equation and replaces it with curiosity and an openness to the experience, which IMHO is far, far more enjoyable and helps make the marathon training process more enriching.

say hello to my non-track track that I use when it’s a nice, sunny day and I don’t want to people-dodge 329782120 people in the park. No fear necessary.

There’s a lot of emotion involved in marathon training, to be sure, but fear needn’t be part of it. 

Tempering

Tempering

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More often than not, I tend to ramble on about The Process — capitalization for emphasis, clearly — with marathon training and the inherent joy and challenge of going through it and coming out on the other side. The Process, the grind, the daily showing up when you don’t always feel like it for whatever real or perceived reason, is part of how we grow as athletes and as human beings. It’s that whole “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it” thing. 

Knowing all that, I tend to hold tight to the value of fairly low expectations for myself. I may have a very vague idea of what I could possibly do on any given day, but it’s exceedingly rare that I go into a race, a workout, or even just a plain ol’ training run with an abundance of confidence about what’s going to happen. Will I fail spectacularly? Will this all go over without a hitch? No idea either way. Won’t know unless (and until) I try. 

That’s a good enough reason, most of the time, to get me out the door to see what’s possible.

I was thinking about all this stuff recently, after my eldest’s swim meet over the weekend and after reading this article from Matt Fitzgerald about his upcoming 100k. I can’t pretend to know what must be running through Matt’s head as he attempts his longest race ever, with a lot of extenuating circumstances that hamstrung his training and his ability to have a minimal-suffering race. His attitude is awesome though — show up, be there for it, and just see how it goes — and this characteristic is one that I’ve been trying mightily to foster in my own approach to my training. 

My eldest’s meet over the weekend also got me thinking about this stuff because she raced very well for her with what I’m pretty sure were fairly non-existent expectations. Of late, she has been drawn to the 500 (500!!) freestyle and has been racing it as often as it’s available in competition; they also fairly routinely do it during practice each week, too. She had been sitting at a certain time for the past 3 or 4 attempts, plus or minus a couple seconds, and she seemed really satisfied by it and happy with the consistent effort she had been putting out. On Sunday though, she took off a solid 20 seconds from her time — 20 seconds! — and when I told her her finish time after she hit the wall (the wall is good to hit in swimming…not so much in running, I know), she was FLOORED, so happy she was nearly in tears. She probably never thought she could do that, or make that huge a jump … until she did. 

radiating joy

As her mom and as an athlete, it was such a joy to witness her realization firsthand.

It is comparably joyful to see how she has become attuned to the beauty of The Process and to watch it unfold night after night at practice and week after week at meets. 

Tempering our high-achieving standards for ourselves with a heaping dose of humble pie, and who knows what will happen? It may not be so bad.

It may, in fact, be far sweeter than we could have imagined.