Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
(Un?)realistic expectations
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
I think the main problem is that without some major change in work or family circumstances, it's impossible to join a club and race more regularly.
Will try an ultra this year and may well have half and 10K pbs too, so it could still be a good year, and it's no bad thing to spend a bit more time with the kids.
Then someone decided to make them SMARTS targets with the last S being for Stretching.
Specific
Measurable (same as specific)
Achievable
Resourced (same as achievable)
Time-lined or whatever
Arousing
Sensual
Stretching
We get stupid management coaches who don't know what our job involves coming in all the time and trying to tell us how to do things.
One of them tried to tell us that Tiger Wood's coach couldn't play golf (as a justification for her being there) at which point I stopped listening.
I've got no time for people who think they can come in and tell you what to do without at least taking an interest in what you do first. Rather off topic I know, but it is one of my biggest hates in a manager, and what is likely to get no performance from me.
"Be pro-active" - oh bell-end off would you?!
:-)))
(PS: It also hold in the reverse - Souness was once a great player ;-) )
I will aim for specific bests at each distance I race;
There is also the age graded times/% that are sometimes included in race results particularly the Vets (whoops, Masters)races
Overall I think the more competitive you are the more likely it's the targets that keep you going rather than the 'process'
Achievable = the times you would achieve if you got divorced, quit your job, robbed a bank and then did nothing but trained, rested, saw physios, ate a gruesomely healthy diet, payed every expert to advise you, etc. etc.
Realistic = the times you will actually achieve while fitting in training around a 50 hour week, a two-hour daily commute, a partner who wants to see you for at least 10 minutes every day (can't they make do with once a week?), 3 kids, mortgage ...
You see, this is what happens when you start applying acronyms to everything, you start talking bo||ox.
I also realised early on, after finding that the races (and training runs) I enjoyed most weren't on flat road courses but on muddy hills, that time isn't always going to be a reliable indication of progress, which I guess is what I'm really looking for in myself. Equally, being competitive and measuring relative position only tells you so much when you run fun runs and very clubby runs, ending up somewhere near the middle of the first one and 6 from the back of the second - but feeling so much more achievement from the latter race.
To some extent your targets have to be arbitrary, like my ambitions for this year which are to finish in the top half of a 5m and to finish a 10m before everyone else has gone home. Once I've hit them, I'll think of a couple more. the one thing I'm determined I'm not going to let running do is worry me.
What I hadn't really thought out was what you do once you've hit your potential. I have a long way to go, I'm still a good 6 stone heavier than the whippet people who disappear into the distance at the front of races and post times not much over half what I can do, but I'm realistic enough to know that with my build and to some extent with my attitude and the role of running in my life I'm never going to be challenging for medals, and I'm not sure I want to be. I enjoy running enough in itself that once I realise I'm not getting any faster, or not going any further in training, then I think I'll still want to do it for the experience, and still do races for the fun aspect of it. Better the slowest runner in the country than the best couch potato.
I expect to achieve PB's at all distances for the next 3 or 4 years or even longer.
But that's not the reason I run! It's only a result of doing what I enjoy.
I run simply because I enjoy the sensation of being very fit and healthy. The ability to run fast over a sustained period of time and push myself to the limit, knowing that I won't collapse but recover very quickly afterwards, is very satisfying.
Other equally or more important aspects of my life allow me to train sensibly for a maximum of 9 hours per week. This is sufficient to enable me to achieve a level of fitness that 99.999% of 46 year olds can only dream about.
I've no idea what is realistic/achievable. When I started running last May on the treadmill, I couldn't see myself going beyond 5k, mostly just doing 2 to 3k's. Now my long run is 15k and I'm getting half marathon comments - and I still hold that I won't do one
But NEVER a marathon
Nothing to do with running at all - but ICI (remember them, international chemical giant) spent £100,000.00's on management consultancy and training. They should have just thrown a post on RW :0)
Far more enlightening and much more fun.
If I can throw in another acronym (can Bryan take another one) ... KISS. This one is from the world of electronic design (I was involved in this before I was demoted to Manager :0) )
K = KEEP
I = IT
S = SIMPLE
S = STUPID
I'm off to the club now to spend some time with like minded fellows putting one foot in front or the other.
I'm beginning to set myself goals with my running. Are they realistic? Don't know yet.
In terms of what most of you are achieving they're not even close to being in the same league.
But they get me out of the door, and I'm hoping that that they will continue to get me out the door after FLM, whether I reach my goal for that or not.
An earlier post said that running had brought out the competitive in someone - same here, even though the only person I am competing with is me! Although I was really pleased how far from the back I was when I finished at Kingston the other day!
The only road race I have done in the last two years is the cornish marathon twice - and the only reason I enter that is because its one big hill after another - which means no 2:30 marathon times and the PB brigade staying at home or struggling with something there not used to which means I get a realistic chance to threaten the top ten and race relatively near the front of the field. Shallow as hell but if they changed it to a flat fast course I would stop entering it.
In an earlier posting I said that if your training (or for that matter internal) expectations are greater than the racing realisations of those expectations then you're done for. If you fail to live up to your expectations, at best you're headed for disappointment, and at worse it's disillusionment and bitterness borne of training ever harder and harder in pursuit of the unachievable. In simple terms we really shouldn't allow our reach to exceed our grasp.
Imagine a running career spent in pursuit of the big goals, the small interim achievements are irrelevant - only the attainment of the big target matters. Think of the sacrifice, think of the effort! If you get there, imagine the achievement, the glory, the admiration of your fellow runners - Paula R can do it why can't you... its got to be worth it. Friends, family, employers, surely they can see why you're doing it.
Great, fantastic, brilliant. But what if you don't achieve that big goal, what if you end up walking away from the sport with nothing to show for all that effort. What if you've deluded yourself, your friends, your family etc, that you were going to deliver and you didn't .....what then.
Some people in this sport of ours may not achieve the big targets, but in their own quiet determined way they they realise the extraordinary - day by day, week by week..... They may never get their names in AW, but their friends, family and other runners know what they've achieved and give then the respect they deserve. At the end of their running careers, unremarkable though they may be in the overall scheme of things, they'll walk away from it with pride in there hearts and a smile on their faces.
That what you get if your expectations are realistic.
how ould i
cant evenexpect to "do my best"
just aint realistic with my job
But to do a decent job will do and to overcome some challenges will do too
sounds pathetic????
well, lifs a compromise--and my job omes first
It's measured in effort, and effort alone. Only you know if it's your best on the day. All the encumberments - work, dietary niggles, false limbs etc, don't affect effort.
Sometimes doing your best for you means actually just being able to put your shoes on and get out there if even for only a little while.
No-one on here will have their PB's engraved on their tombstones, if they do, then I politely suggest that they have wasted their lives.
Life is for living, and enjoying. It's about having fun. It's perverse, but I genuinely enjoy putting myself through the wringer. Can't see myself troubling the GB team selectors.
Running is a dichotomy - we have the runners we all admire (Bekele, Aouita, Pantman ;-) ) who we know there's no hope in Hell we could emulate. We just have to stand and admire, because we're (most of us) wise after the timepoint at which we could have achieved something (perhaps truly) great.
Then we have the people who make up the rich tapestry of running. Me, you, even Barnsley "I ain't leaving Yarkshire" Runner. We're all part of the same group. If this group was defined by times alone then why is the story of Michael Watson so compelling? Why aren't we slagging him for taking so long to finish FLM? Because he's a hero, he faced a world of pain and rose above it. And there's many like him, who face different difficulties but are heroes to themselves for having the guts to see it through to the end.
The bravery is on the same scale, no matter were you are on the scale of speed; and people should look to move along their own scale of speed and advance along that rather than attempt the impossible.
Running is fun, why complicate it? Just enjoy it.
??
"No-one on here will have their PB's engraved on their tombstones, if they do, then I politely suggest that they have wasted their lives."