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.
In the absence of a PA USATF cross-country meet over the weekend, the girls and I ventured down to Morgan Hill for my big one’s swim meet, the second of the season. If you’ve never been to a swim meet, they remind me a lot of track meets — a lot of down time and lots of hurrying up to wait, punctuated by quick bursts of action — and it makes me appreciate how much my parents moved earth, wind, and water to try to attend as many of my own (track) meets as possible to watch me run very short distances, for very short periods of time, when I was growing up.
Most people wouldn’t choose to sit around outdoors for 8 hours on a Saturday, and then again on Sunday, to watch someone swim for less than 10 total minutes each day… until it’s your kid, and your kid’s team, and suddenly, you can’t get there early enough, and you’re the last one out the door each day, too.
Love propels us to do many things.
#1 fan (can’t go wrong with butt paste on the face, or so the story goes)
As I’ve watched A grow and develop in the year or so that she’s been on the swim team — and since she began swimming with me, in a parent/tot class when she was about 8 months old — I’ve realized that watching her swim has taught me a lot: and not just in the obvious ways. Suffice it to say that before she joined a swim team, I knew very little about swimming; I was one of those fools who would pantomime different strokes because I could never keep them all (all 4 of them, wowwwwwwww) straight. I can’t tell you how to avoid a DQ in most strokes, but I can generally explain how to read a meet sheet and how to not miss your event. (We all have our strengths).
Instead, as I’ve witnessed my eldest daughter’s trajectory with her swimming and have watched her come into her own in the water, I’ve realized that her athletic experience has been teaching me a lot about my own, but with running. In no particular order:
Keep showing up. Desi said it wonderfully. We all know that sometimes, the hardest step to take is the first. When my daughter first began with her team, she was typically pretty happy to go to practice (90 minutes, 3 times a week, minimum), but of course, as a then 7-year-old, there were times when she didn’t want to because of (insert whatever valid or invalid reason here). In these moments, I’ve often reminded her that sometimes, just getting out there to do your thing is the hardest part (and have recounted timeless occasions when I’ve not particularly “felt” like going for a run during a particularly grueling training block but went anyway and was ultimately happy about it). Even if she didn’t feel like going initially, it’s rare that she has regretted her choice later. The same has been true with me and my running; even if I’d rather spend the time I have to run doing (insert whatever else I could be doing instead), more often than not, I know I’ll ultimately be (happier, in a better mood, sleeping better that night, insert a myriad of characteristics here) if I get out there. Don’t rob yourself of an opportunity simply because your mood or motivation is falling short of your commitment.
showing up (PC: Janet)
Comparison really is the thief of joy. This is a big one and a routine topic of conversation. For most of the past year, my eldest has been the youngest on her team, which has been both awesome and sometimes challenging. She periodically has days when she finishes practice feeling discouraged or bothered, and it’s not until I practically apply the Jaws of Life to our conversation that I can extract the ultimate reason for her woe: she’s upset she’s the slowest. Or doesn’t have as long a break between sets. Or can’t always finish the full set as prescribed. Or whatever. It’s often not until we have the conversation, wherein I remind her that she’s swimming with her teammates who have a good couple years-plus on her, that I can encourage her to put her doubts at bay, at least moderately. Don’t worry about what others are doing in surrounding (literal and figurative) lanes; keep your eyes facing forward, and focus on your own effort. It’s easier said than done for sure, but believe me, when I have gotten in my own head about my running of late and what it is versus what I think it should be, I have the same conversation that I’ve had with my eight year-old with myself. The only two things we can control are our attitude and effort, so simply worry about those. Nothing else is relevant, and no one is going to do your work for you.
eyes forward, heart open (with lungs heaving)
Learn, be patient, and enjoy the process. Learning how to do something for the first time can be seriously intimidating but also exquisitely fun. Progress can come in leaps and bounds, but if you’re accustomed to picking up things fast or “naturally,” whatever that means, when things become slow-going, it can be hard to not let the minutiae consume you. As my daughter has become a stronger swimmer, she’s naturally beginning to break-down everything to its component parts — to the positioning of her hands, where (and how many) hands should make contact with the wall, all that stuff — and it can sometimes be tempting to want to bulldoze through this process because it’s so.much.tedium. This stuff takes time. Progress may be really fast initially, but then it’ll seem like you have to fight tooth and nail for every half-second or second’s worth of progress. With running, much of the same applies. We may have the loftiest goals ever, but in order to realize them, or even work toward realizing them, we have to be patient and understand that it’s a process or journey to be enjoyed, not something to hastily mow over. There are always more aspects to learn, more material to master, and when we feel like we already know all there is to know, we probably couldn’t be more wrong.
trusting and processing
Helping others is intrinsically rewarding and motivating. It wasn’t until recently that another swimmer closer in age to A joined the team, and perhaps naturally, they’ve taken a liking to each other and try to work together as much as possible during practice. My daughter has been on the team longer and has more competitive experience than her peer, and I see her interacting with her teammate in what I could probably comfortably call a mentorship. My daughter obviously doesn’t know everything there is to know about swimming, but she knows enough to acknowledge that there’s a delta between her knowledge and that of her teammate, and she’s trying to correct it because she wants her to succeed. As running (and the long endurance stuff, in particular) has exploded in popularity over the past decade, marathons, halfs, and arguably even some ultra distances have become accessible and intriguing to the masses; “normal,” “everyday” people are figuring out that those big, scary distances really may not be as big and scary as they seem. You don’t have to be an RRCA certified coach to give new runners pointers as they begin their journeys, and you’ll likely find that doing so brings you at least a modicum of joy and helps reinvigorate your own training. Your experiences don’t need to dictate those of others, but if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to prevent someone else from making the same asinine mistakes that you made.
teamwork, a la cheering for a teammate swimming 1,000 for the first time and counting laps; even G was yelling, “pull! pull! pull!”
I don’t know enough from a physiological standpoint to argue whether running and swimming are similar, and honestly, I don’t particularly care. As a parent who has been watching her child grow in the sport of swimming, I can safely argue that much of what my 8-year-old has been learning are lessons that I, too, have experienced (or continue to experience) as a runner — just with a different backdrop.
I couldn’t be prouder of my girl and her commitment to her team and to herself, and honestly, she has been a huge source of inspiration to up my own running game.
It’s somewhat mind-blowing that sport can have such a transformative effect on a person’s life — especially when you consider the actions at their basest parts– but here again, as both a witness and as a participant, it’s so completely obvious that that’s the case.
