A friend of mine in Tampa has gone through some pretty tough situations over the past year. During the summer, her house caught on fire. No one was hurt (including her pets), but it was an understandably traumatic experience. More recently, she was in a car accident and her vehicle was totaled. Again, no one was hurt, but she had finished paying off the car only a month before....seriously. This seriously happened. However, she somehow gets through these things with a smile on her face and patience. I certainly do not think that I would be capable of doing the same.
My friend got a new car last week and it is very spiffy. It is a Kia Soul and has all kinds of great features (including speakers that light up!), plus it is a brand-new car. She was able to manage this in the aftermath of the accident, meaning that she came out ahead. When we were talking about this, we also noted that while the fire had been very traumatic, there were good elements from that too, such as getting a new central A/C put in her house (she did have A/C before, but the central system had broken and she had been using window units). What I took from this was that even though she had encountered difficult and challenging situations, there truly was a silver lining on these potentially dark clouds.
I was reminded of this observation this morning when I had to stop my long run because I did not feel well at all--which, okay, is not on the level of having my house catch on fire or being in a car accident, but is frustrating all the same. After chiding myself over and over, then getting angry at myself for not training better, I decided to check the upcoming weather. My plan is to redo this run on Thursday (it's 12 miles) because there is supposed to be a major storm moving through on Tuesday, and I already ran in one monsoon this month. And you know what? The weather looks fantastic. Highs in the 70s (!) and lows in the 50s (!!!). I could not ask for better weather around these parts at this time of year. Sure, I would still prefer that I had finished today. But sometimes things don't go the way that you hope. What is important, is that it does work out in the end.
(I think the issue this morning was that I was out of healthy Gatorade and decided to try apple cider instead. This is not something that I will try again. However, I'm still feeling lousy, so maybe there is something else at work here).
Showing posts with label Quitting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quitting. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
On Failure
This is a hard post to write and I've been going back and forth about it all day. But I figured that in a worst-case scenario, I could delete it from the internet (hopefully) forever. So here we go!
As you probably got from the past few posts, things have not quite gone as planned with this new running goal. So I am preemptively choosing to fail it. My goal was to set a new personal record (PR) at a 5k at the start of March. I had a plan mapped out with all kinds of the right workouts. But unfortunately, I don't feel like I can complete them right now. And I'm trying to make my peace with that.
Like most people, I don't like to fail. Actually, during my running career, I have been pretty fortunate; I haven't experienced too many total failures, like having to drop out of a race or having to quit running for a while. If anything, I've been somewhat fail-free. The one exception was last spring, when I decided that I wanted to break my 10k time. For some reason, 10k is a distance that I do not seem to have an understanding with. Even last fall, when I was training for the marathon, I thought that I had a really great chance at a PR when I did a 10k as a turkey trot in Detroit. Feeling pretty good through four miles, my plan was to gun it through miles 5-6.2, thus hopefully breaking my 10k PR. Sadly, I missed the 5M marker and was not wearing my nifty phone with its nifty running distance app. Imagine my surprise when I saw the 6-mile marker. I did manage to gun it for the last 0.2 miles, but that was not enough for a new record.
I feel that this experience pretty much sums up me trying to improve my 10k time. When I think that I'm about to do well, things don't go as planned. In fact, I had a better 5M mile split for quite a while and just could not seem to bring up the slightly longer distance. Last year, after a decent turkey trot 10k the Thanksgiving before that was a PR -- albeit not that impressive of one, I felt -- I found a 10k plan, signed myself for two 10ks, and set out to break my PR. I thought that this would be a piece of cake because I was going to put in good, solid training and I had broken my 5k PR in the fall.
It didn't happen. I didn't train as often or as well as I wanted. Neither of the races went particularly well. The first one I overheated, even though it was in the 30s (dumb!). The second one, I overheated, but that was because it was getting hot again (normal). In fact, in the second one, I thought that I was last at one point and was ready to actually quit. That would have been a first. But somehow I powered through it and, as it turned out, was nowhere near last (this was fortunate because there were two super-slow walky-runny people behind me or I would have been. But I wasn't. We can argue about the absolute value of this accomplishment another time).
I realize that some people might not see this as failing necessarily. After all, I did run both 10ks. I did complete them in relatively acceptable times. But it still felt like I failed, and that I could attribute my failure to the fact that training was not very good.
Maybe my lesson here is that the late winter/early spring is not my time to train well. Work tends to get busy at this point in the year and I generally feel more tired. That leads to not wanting to run, even when the workouts are shorter than my marathon ones were. Not to mention that I have more days when I just want to rest. Or maybe I am not being as diligent about carving out my running time as I was during marathon training. Whatever it is, things are not working right now. Hence my preemptive quit.
I still plan to run my 5ks, although I don't think that either of them will be a PR (I would put big money on this). And I do see this as a failure. But I'm trying to keep my focus on the big picture. A long time ago, I decided that I would not get mad at myself for what I can or cannot do as a runner. Because if I do spend my time getting angry, then I won't want to run anymore, and then I will quit. That would be a true failing and the worst one. It's hard enough to motivate yourself sometimes without having a little voice inside working against you.
So for the next week -- until February 15, when my work deadlines will abate -- I have a new plan. Actually, it's a new not-plan. I am not planning what to do. If I want to run, I will run. If I want to do an exercise video, so I shall. If I want to swim, that's good too. However, I will do something. The schedule will be today, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. For someone who is a born planner, this is quite a change of pace.
Today I went for a run. It was short. I cut it shorter than I had initially planned for it to be. I had no watch or phone or fun toy--they will come back, just not for right now. However, I succeeded. I went. I got the shoes on and left the house. In my long-term plan, I've still failed. But what matters now is what I do afterward.
As you probably got from the past few posts, things have not quite gone as planned with this new running goal. So I am preemptively choosing to fail it. My goal was to set a new personal record (PR) at a 5k at the start of March. I had a plan mapped out with all kinds of the right workouts. But unfortunately, I don't feel like I can complete them right now. And I'm trying to make my peace with that.
Like most people, I don't like to fail. Actually, during my running career, I have been pretty fortunate; I haven't experienced too many total failures, like having to drop out of a race or having to quit running for a while. If anything, I've been somewhat fail-free. The one exception was last spring, when I decided that I wanted to break my 10k time. For some reason, 10k is a distance that I do not seem to have an understanding with. Even last fall, when I was training for the marathon, I thought that I had a really great chance at a PR when I did a 10k as a turkey trot in Detroit. Feeling pretty good through four miles, my plan was to gun it through miles 5-6.2, thus hopefully breaking my 10k PR. Sadly, I missed the 5M marker and was not wearing my nifty phone with its nifty running distance app. Imagine my surprise when I saw the 6-mile marker. I did manage to gun it for the last 0.2 miles, but that was not enough for a new record.
I feel that this experience pretty much sums up me trying to improve my 10k time. When I think that I'm about to do well, things don't go as planned. In fact, I had a better 5M mile split for quite a while and just could not seem to bring up the slightly longer distance. Last year, after a decent turkey trot 10k the Thanksgiving before that was a PR -- albeit not that impressive of one, I felt -- I found a 10k plan, signed myself for two 10ks, and set out to break my PR. I thought that this would be a piece of cake because I was going to put in good, solid training and I had broken my 5k PR in the fall.
It didn't happen. I didn't train as often or as well as I wanted. Neither of the races went particularly well. The first one I overheated, even though it was in the 30s (dumb!). The second one, I overheated, but that was because it was getting hot again (normal). In fact, in the second one, I thought that I was last at one point and was ready to actually quit. That would have been a first. But somehow I powered through it and, as it turned out, was nowhere near last (this was fortunate because there were two super-slow walky-runny people behind me or I would have been. But I wasn't. We can argue about the absolute value of this accomplishment another time).
I realize that some people might not see this as failing necessarily. After all, I did run both 10ks. I did complete them in relatively acceptable times. But it still felt like I failed, and that I could attribute my failure to the fact that training was not very good.
Maybe my lesson here is that the late winter/early spring is not my time to train well. Work tends to get busy at this point in the year and I generally feel more tired. That leads to not wanting to run, even when the workouts are shorter than my marathon ones were. Not to mention that I have more days when I just want to rest. Or maybe I am not being as diligent about carving out my running time as I was during marathon training. Whatever it is, things are not working right now. Hence my preemptive quit.
I still plan to run my 5ks, although I don't think that either of them will be a PR (I would put big money on this). And I do see this as a failure. But I'm trying to keep my focus on the big picture. A long time ago, I decided that I would not get mad at myself for what I can or cannot do as a runner. Because if I do spend my time getting angry, then I won't want to run anymore, and then I will quit. That would be a true failing and the worst one. It's hard enough to motivate yourself sometimes without having a little voice inside working against you.
So for the next week -- until February 15, when my work deadlines will abate -- I have a new plan. Actually, it's a new not-plan. I am not planning what to do. If I want to run, I will run. If I want to do an exercise video, so I shall. If I want to swim, that's good too. However, I will do something. The schedule will be today, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. For someone who is a born planner, this is quite a change of pace.
Today I went for a run. It was short. I cut it shorter than I had initially planned for it to be. I had no watch or phone or fun toy--they will come back, just not for right now. However, I succeeded. I went. I got the shoes on and left the house. In my long-term plan, I've still failed. But what matters now is what I do afterward.
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