Friday, August 15, 2014

Look where you go and go where you look

Tuesday morning, as usual, I ran to the gym for a spin class (the tri training plan has brick workouts on Tuesdays), ran a bit on the treadmill after class, and then as I was running home, the skies opened up and it rained on me sideways. 

As I was miserably sloshing through puddles, wondering whether to take my phone out of its pocket on my waterbottle handheld and put it in a ziploc, I had one of those Moments. 

The Moment went something like this: what the heck am I doing all this FOR? Why am I waking up at 5.45am to do lengthy cardio things to myself, why am I doing my 95th clamshell or leg lift of the day, when I'm obviously not a professional athlete, when I'm never going to make it to the Olympics unless they start a new category for competitive napping? When I'm the least competitive person I know, can talk myself out of pushing hard in a mere 10k, and will most likely never see the right side of a podium?  

This is the sort of Moment that's lasted half a week now. The question nagging at me is not 'why do I run?' but 'why do I work THIS hard to race?' 'Why do I run' is easy. I like being outdoors, I like fresh air, I like the feeling of running. It's like dancing - because it feels good and because it looks beautiful and because adrenaline and endorphins and serotonin and you're having fun while you're at it.  

But racing is different. There's a clear-cut winner, a hierarchy of participants. Someone has to be first. Someone has to be last. I know where I want to be (BQ? really race a tri for once, and place?) and also that I am very, very far off. Why do I work (talentless) this (clumsy) hard (genetically challenged) at something that will give me zero external validation? Give me a few days to think about it and I'm sure my rational brain will come up with a justification. Right now my lizard brain just wants to go back into hibernation. 

Why do you

I had to listen to this talk by triathlete Hillary Biscay to get my head back into the right place.

8 comments:

  1. I think it's goal related. I know that when I got out of school, I was left with few personal goals, and running helped me come up with some. Perhaps pointless, but something to work towards.

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    1. It's true. I have these arbitrary achievement-based personal goals - run a half in less than two hours! PR a 10K! that are sort of entertaining.

      But sometimes to be really pleased with my performance and to really, really push myself, I have to have external motivation. The most satisfying 10K I've ever done was trying to come in top 10 (because prizes, even if the prize was a toaster) in a very small local race (I ended up 12th woman but what a race).

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  2. I think about this ALL the time. Even just with training (not even racing) - why am I devoting 7-14 hours a week to a "hobby"? The running part is relatively easy -- it's become a part of who I am. But the swimming, cycling, and strength/rehab work is still a struggle. Like Gracie said, I think part of it is setting goals and achieving them -- even if they don't get me on the podium. Doing things I would've never thought possible 5-10 years ago -- running a marathon (or 4!), running a mile in 7:28 and a half marathon in less than 2 hours, and being able to swim 200 yards without stopping. Nothing crazy, but still big accomplishments to me.

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    1. Haha, yeah. I have no issue with the running. I'm a runner through and through - that's just who I am. But with the racing...I have only two motivation settings: nil ('I'm just going to float here till the field of swimmers is out of my way') and full tilt ('I want this sub-5 marathon more than I mind these insane cramps'). There is no happy medium...

      I do like what you did with the process-oriented goals in your last marathon, though. That should be enough to make me happy or at least distract me from the competitive, achievement-oriented ones, but sometimes my greedy reptilian brain isn't satisfied.

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    2. I've found that it's very easy to come up with (and quantify!) outcome-based goals, and much more difficult to think of process-based goals. Plus, the process-based goals usually requires enough past experience to determine whether you achieved it. For example, one of mine would be pushing the mental demons out of my head in the last mile of any race. I had to have run enough races where that's happened to make it a worthy goal. Also, an easy way to stay away from outcome-based goals is to put it completely out of your grasp. Like, I knew going into Big Sur that I had a 1% chance of running a PR because of the difficulty of the course, so that forced me to come up with other goals. I think the funny thing is regardless of whether I choose outcome- or process-based goals, I just want to try my best, full stop. The only difference is how I feel about/interpret the result at the end.

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    3. You're right. Outcome-based goals are much easier to come up with. And measure, too. And hit, or miss. It's slowly dawned on me that part of my frustration is due to the nagging feeling that I've plateaued, and how would I measure whether I've plateaued if not for outcome-based goals?

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  3. Man, I dunno. This is too deep a question for me. I like getting stronger and seeing improvement, even if that's never going to translate into winning. I mean, think of how easy it is to do something that seemed unfathomable a few years ago (for me, that was running five miles). That's pretty awesome, right?

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  4. I'm waaaay behind, but who cares??

    I'm kinda like Jeano - for me, it's one area of my life where consistent work leads to consistent (even if small) results. My avg heartrate drops a smidge on easy runs, I can add an interval or drop a few seconds from a set, I ran 13, then 14, and today 16 miles....

    Life is unpredictable and sometimes your yeast plates get contaminated (throwback to my lab days) - but hard work on the track, on the trails, on the road...leads to small personal improvements, centimeter by centimeter. (<--See how I went all metric on you there? Color me integrated!)

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