Today I use a recent race, that left me feeling like I’d run harder than ever, I probably did. The issue was that I meant to run Smarter not harder. My meandering illustrates that we have a Knowing V Doing gap. (A theme that will pop up again and again.) Knowing- having the knowledge of what one is supposed to do, Doing- putting that knowledge into action. The gap…fill that bit in for yourselves.
Reflecting on the weekend’s running left me dissatisfied. I ran a 15km trail, with the intention to use strategies to ensure I ran smarter than ever before. So what went wrong? A number of simple things and a couple of them glaringly obvious.
- Lack of sleep- 3 nights in a row of poor sleep.
- Despite all good intentions eating way too early for a night run. The food eaten over 3 hours before was not sufficient to sustain me during the work later. Some simple carbs from veggies, an hour or so before the run, would have been an excellent idea.
- Didn’t check last years results on the same course. This was definitely a biggie. This information would have done much to calm my thinking, help me make better judgements and hold on longer; If I’d checked my data it would have been obvious that my start was fine, not too fast and I needn’t have caught myself up in thinking loops, instead using strategies to manage my thoughts that were based on the evidence that I could hold and perhaps even raise my pace
- I should have expected to be more uncomfortable so that when it happened, I was prepared.