Who Are You Kidding??

There’s a whole contradictory that goes on isn’t there?! There’s a camp of “just keep doing the work,” “consistency will pay dividends”, “just keep showing up” AND then there’s “you can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results” and the “the definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results.”

BUT to all of the above there’s a caveat. The reality is that the middle ground is and the use of the caveats is what creates the results. YES, you have to keep showing up, YES consistency will pay dividends and YES keep doing the work BUT the caveat is that you need to make sure that it’s the right work and that there’s a good balance between the work you’re doing and the recovery that you putting in, making sure that the elements outside of the running are being implemented. You can’t expect things to change overnight and you won’t get to harvest the crop in the blink of an eye. You need to sow the seeds and tend to the crop, ensuring that you are dealing with the needs of the crop at the different stages of growth and if there’s anything pesky trying to destroy your crop that you deal with it expeditiously. THEN onto the definition of insanity and doing the same thing and expecting different results well, yeah sometimes you have to be patience and give things time – back to not being able to harvest the crop within days of sowing the seeds BUT there does have to come a point where you re-assess.

So why is any of these even relevant?? Well, this year I’ve been trying to create a come back from injury. At the beginning of the year I was just happy to be able to run pain free and yes I’ve kept showing up, consistently putting the miles in, getting frustrated that it’s not getting any easier and that the times aren’t coming down. I’ve continued to tell myself that I need to simply keep showing up. I’ve told myself that there’ll be THAT RUN, that run where it all just clicks together and I’ll be on the come back. BUT, it’s not happened. Now I’ve got to accept that it’s time for things to change.

I do sometimes struggle because I can’t implement a structure to my training. I accept that this is the case and need to be much more fluid and flexible than a lot of people who are prioritising their training. I work at different times on different days all of the time, I don’t have set times where I am available and my schedule can change on the morning and I have to adapt the day accordingly. That’s ok. I need to make sure that I have a a fluid & flexible approach to my training. I manage to get all my training in and generally run 5-6 days per week so the time is there to train but often what happens is that it defaults to being easy miles and then the occasional session thrown in when I have the capacity to think about it.

When I was training at my best I had a fluid plan. Each week I had 1-2 sessions and a long run (sometimes a session sometimes not) scheduled for the week and it was up to me as to where/when these things happened depending on my commitments and energy levels. It isn’t always ideal and sometimes it happens that there’s back to back efforts but it’s manageable and achievable. Now, I need to make sure I also incorporate strength work and mobility/stretching to keep injuries at bay.

I’ve avoided planning because;