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A Lesson Learnt
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I used to enjoy just getting out early on a Sunday and just running but, more recently I’ve tended to run according to time and distance on every occasion and it has kind of taken over. It’s been in an effort to improve and I’ve been haring round trying to either beat the time round a particular route or beat the distance travelled in a given time, when I should have been out for the time on my feet at a nice even, comfortable pace. It’s ended up with most recent Sundays being run at half marathon pace for between one and a half and two hours. Effectively I’ve been racing every Sunday, but only against myself. I knew that this needed to be tempered but I’d become almost obsessive. I have a heart rate monitor but am very good at ignoring it or not putting it on.
Whilst I have definitely seen some benefits in terms of speed, endurance and my breathing, it has all started to become a bit de-motivational from the point of view that I know it’s going to be hard. Getting up in the dark doesn’t help either.
But I learnt a lesson yesterday (Sunday 24/11).
Last Sunday I got up raring not to go on my early plod and, in the end, didn’t. I went back to bed then spent the rest of the day feeling bad that I had been so lazy. Yesterday I woke up feeling much the same but I forced myself out of the door. I had decided to run a favourite route of mine in the opposite direction to usual and was determined not to run by my watch. I was going to allow myself a glance at it when I got to a certain point, which I thought should be at about one hour 25, and then plod back home from there.
So, I set off, started my stopwatch and ran comfortably. I enjoyed myself. I even stopped very briefly to chat to an old boy who was walking his dog in the middle of nowhere. I kept getting to certain points on the route and thinking, “Blimey, am I here already?”
Eventually I reached the point I set as the “watch glance marker” and found that I had been going for an hour and 21 minutes. I thought I might as well do the full hour and a half and so had to take a slight detour to use up the minutes.
I got home feeling great. I’d actually run further without even trying because I’d not been constantly running by my watch and putting pressure on myself. I’d set off nice and steady and probably built up the pace, rather than setting off at pace from the outset.
And, another thing was, I didn’t get the map and string out to measure the route. I have an idea of how far I went but why spoil things by going back to being obsessive!!
I’ll continue to do the hard stuff on the treadmill, the hills and the tempo stuff based around time/distance, but I think that from now on Sundays will be for just getting out there and spending time on my feet. Maybe they might even become special again…Sundays that is, not my feet!
HH
Whilst I have definitely seen some benefits in terms of speed, endurance and my breathing, it has all started to become a bit de-motivational from the point of view that I know it’s going to be hard. Getting up in the dark doesn’t help either.
But I learnt a lesson yesterday (Sunday 24/11).
Last Sunday I got up raring not to go on my early plod and, in the end, didn’t. I went back to bed then spent the rest of the day feeling bad that I had been so lazy. Yesterday I woke up feeling much the same but I forced myself out of the door. I had decided to run a favourite route of mine in the opposite direction to usual and was determined not to run by my watch. I was going to allow myself a glance at it when I got to a certain point, which I thought should be at about one hour 25, and then plod back home from there.
So, I set off, started my stopwatch and ran comfortably. I enjoyed myself. I even stopped very briefly to chat to an old boy who was walking his dog in the middle of nowhere. I kept getting to certain points on the route and thinking, “Blimey, am I here already?”
Eventually I reached the point I set as the “watch glance marker” and found that I had been going for an hour and 21 minutes. I thought I might as well do the full hour and a half and so had to take a slight detour to use up the minutes.
I got home feeling great. I’d actually run further without even trying because I’d not been constantly running by my watch and putting pressure on myself. I’d set off nice and steady and probably built up the pace, rather than setting off at pace from the outset.
And, another thing was, I didn’t get the map and string out to measure the route. I have an idea of how far I went but why spoil things by going back to being obsessive!!
I’ll continue to do the hard stuff on the treadmill, the hills and the tempo stuff based around time/distance, but I think that from now on Sundays will be for just getting out there and spending time on my feet. Maybe they might even become special again…Sundays that is, not my feet!
HH
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Comments
As you say, this does show improvement to a certain extent, but I've been focussing over the past few weeks just on the shorter runs and getting obsessed by time/distance. In fact, I haven't done a proper long run for some weeks - I was up to about an hour and a quarter but for various reasons (illness, other commitments) haven't managed more than about 40 minutes for a while. Like you, though, when I got back from my long run I'd get out the map and string.
I'll take your advice and try to make at least one run a week for pleasure before I start to lose motivation (which is beginning to happen).
This was my experience on Saturday - having set myself a certain mark I felt I had to reach to consider myself "on track" for my Helsby 1/2M target time (and failed to do it the previous week), it put me under pressure and made the session incredibly difficult - I recorded a race-level average HR for the session.
Trouble is, so far as my situation is concerned, I don't have enough experience of running this far at speed to know whether I could manage the pace I need without the aid of a timer. In general, my pace judgement is poor, which doesn't help.
Slogging my guts out worked to a point. Trouble is I didn't realise when I'd gone past that point.
Like I said, I saw benefits that I can take forward and will help me to improve in the future (hopefully) but I realise that the biggest problem was that I wasn't enjoying running any more or, at least, I wasn't enjoying the prospect of running any more. It was getting to the stage that I'd start trying to make excuses not to run. Most of the time though I was OK when I was out, but Sundays were starting to become a chore and this was starting to affect my whole motivation.
Minkin - Hope you get out there and enjoy yourself. I think it'll be worth it.
Mike S - If your pace judgement is poor you want to try having mine. I can generally set myself an out and back route to run within a given time but as for knowing what pace I'm running at..... I used to run with a neighbour who could run without a watch, know within a minute how long we'd been out for, know what sort of pace he was running at and therefore what distance (within a few tenths of a mile) we'd covered. I tested him out by deviating from known routes and doing a few "back-double) and he still got it. He doesn't run any more but his ability would come in useful. If only he were small enough to fit on my wrist!
MartinH - I do believe that OTC was the next stop. Thankfully I hope to take a different route
Oracle - when I was training earlier this year for London I had some fantastic 3hr Sunday morning runs. It's hard to believe that you can be out for so long, enjoy it and even sometimes wonder where the time went.
Dangly Spice - I went off road last Thursday round near work (Cambridge). It was another morning when I tried to tell myself that I didn't want to go out. But I went. I ended up in some Nature Reserve/Spinney getting completed lost, scratched by brambles, sliding down chalky banks and getting generally covered in muck. I got back to the office and people thought something dreadful had happened to me. They found it hard to believe that I had just had a really enjoyable time.
I feel quite positive again (perhaps pouring out my heart on this forum has helped!) and I'm actually starting to look forward to the New Year and London training. I had actually been starting to worry a bit.
HH