Cultivating your inner drive now will pay dividends later.
I like hitting the track or completing a long run. I like to feel my body getting stronger, being strong, then proving it to myself, scrapping it and starting again. It’s a mostly fun process and it’s never done being optimized.
I like the mini victory of doing the workout I planned to do in a day. The rhythm of a week with workouts, easy days, and long runs is my normal. I don’t feel centered without those minutes of mental and physical focus. How about you?Although I’ve used this ever-expanding time without races to take a much needed break, that’s over, and here we are, still appreciating the run and, hopefully, our health, but still stalled. It can be hard to train too much longer than a few months without some kind of challenge or test on the schedule. I already knew I was motivated largely by competition, the community of the events, and curiosity about what I can do at any given time. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that because it’s also layered with expectations and obligations around results, quality of races, and time standards.While it’s good to tune into that, a lot of those things aren’t available right now. Now, the focus is more on personal wins, season bests, and pushing for the sake of creating benchmarks and just trying hard regardless of how many people will see it or care. As difficult as that is to get excited for—I usually don’t get my best performances in time trials or even racing the guys in unofficial races—I think it’s a valuable muscle to work. I notice it’s quick to tire whenever I get stuck in no-woman’s land in a race and have to gut it out the rest of the way, which happens probably too much.There’s a lot of confusion about what you should do with this unpredictable amount of time away from major race events. If you need to rest, this is a good time. I think if you were already really fit, then it’s worth the effort of creating an opportunity to test your fitness. It might be a race of one. It might be a time trial or a “micro meet.” Not everyone has the resources to do that, or do it well, or travel to somewhere that is. At the professional level, there’s the added confusion of fulfilling contract requirements when the events no longer exist. While we can talk about having good faith that the circumstances will be understood, we also know that the language of the agreements have the final say—and we want to races to run! We can create them; they won’t be the same, and it’s a crash course in race directing, but at least it’s something. I hope to put a few local events on my schedule myself if developments in the pandemic allow it. There are a lot of motivations swirling around right now: fear, scarcity, anxiety, hope, money, standards. It can be disorienting. But that’s another benefit to tuning into your intrinsic drive. It’s also like your personal true north. I trust running in that direction.Molly Huddle is a two-time Olympian who holds the American record at 10,000 meters and the half marathon. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.
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