Saturday, December 31, 2011

2011, Then 2012

Seems like a good time to reflect on the year that has passed, see how I've done with all I wanted to accomplish, and in general find a creative outlet for some of my nostalgia (which lately has been pretty prevalent in my mind).

What were my personal goals outside of running this year?

That's easy.  Pass the PE Exam.  Get ahead of the housework and stay ahead.  Do some maintenance on the house that is overdo.  Learn sign language.

I passed the PE (found out last week!).  That's a huge career milestone that I fear I haven't put enough emphasis on here, because it isn't really related to my running (unless you count the runs I skipped while studying for it).

The housework is mostly caught up after cleaning for the holidays.  It probably won't stay that way.  This goal will likely continue into next year, and the year after...

I didn't do most of the maintenance stuff I wanted.  I was busy with other stuff (read:  goofing off).

Learn sign language.  This is not a pipe dream.  It will happen.  Someday...


What did I want to do this year as a runner?

Every year starts out great (just like every day).  Full of possibilities, ideas, schemes, goals that you think, "Yea, I'll do that.  Piece of cake."  And sometimes it is.  But more often than not, there are a lot of failures, and the grander the plan, the more spectacular the failure.  And I tend to plan big.

-Run some "fast" 5k races.  The plan was to get under 20 minutes first (which I haven't done since high school), then work towards something in the 18 minute range.  I didn't even get close to cracking 20 minutes.
-Run more events.  I don't have anyone nearby that I run with.  I don't know many of the local runners, because I just don't run enough races to meet that many people.  I wanted to run several 5k races, a few longer ones, and a half marathon.  I ran the half, and 2 5k's.  Not even close.
-Run my first half marathon.  Here I succeeded, and it was one of my favorite races that I've ever been a part of.  I'm really hoping that it works out for me to run it again next year.  Big plans sometimes equal big successes.
-Kick butt at the Thanksgiving Day 8k in my hometown.  You can't have a good race if you don't train consistently, don't eat healthy, and don't even show up.
-Run over 1,200 miles this calendar year.  I'm at 896 miles as of December 30th, I don't think I'll be making this one, but I am going to make 900.  Close enough?

In terms of planning and goals, it was a pretty modest year for me, and I still managed to fail almost completely.  The half marathon was really the only success I had for the year as a runner, but I always see these things in context.  Everyone has failures, and you can't realistically expect to hit a home run every time I swing the bat.  Maybe if I showed up to the batting cages a bit more often between games...

And my one big success really was big.  It was the only race distance I'd never raced, and I went out and did exactly what I wanted to do.  Everyone wants that perfect race, that moment in the sun, and for one hour, forty seven minutes, and thirty six seconds, I experienced something that a large number of athletes spend their whole lives longing for.  I was who I hoped to be, and did what I set out to do - what more can a person ask for in their entire life?

I took a moment this morning to go back and read an article on ESPN that was one of my favorites of the year.  Author Jeff MacGregor, one of my favorites, wrote a piece about his disillusion with professional basketball and how watching a young man named Lukas Verzbicas run a 4 minute mile (only the 5th American high school runner to do so, ever) brought him to a place where he could remember what sports should be.  It is one of the best written sports articles I've ever read (read it yourself here, and I think it underscores what I would like my life to be.  For a brief, magical period, this young man was exactly the way he dreamed himself to be.

I don't do New Years resolutions.  I typically set a list of goals for myself for the coming year, but of the 10 or 12 I set, I usually only accomplish a couple, and this method isn't serving me very well.  There are goals, and there are dreams, and the dreams are usually much bigger and farther away than the goals.  I'm going to spend the year making my dreams and my goals the same, and in every endeavor in 2012, I'm going to attempt to be the person that I am in my own fantasies.  No more goals set months in advance, to be brushed aside when they get hard or something else comes up.  Just dealing with what is out in front of me, and doing it in a way that leaves me feeling the same way I felt in the middle of the Virginia Beach Half Marathon - real, genuine, exactly who I wanted to be doing exactly what I intended to do.

Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, See you January 3rd!

In case you haven't noticed, I've kind of been on hiatus lately.  Very little running, practically no blogging.

I've been sick, and then there was Christmas, and now I've got year-end stuff going on and a house guest for the week.  So I'm punting, I'm just going to sit idle until the beginning of next week, and enjoy a little rest.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Deep South

So what has been keeping me away from my beloved blog for weeks on end, depriving you of the joy and fulfillment that comes from reading the tales of my heroic misadventures as a runner (and various other "professions" which I claim)?

In a word, barbeque.

Since my training was inconsistent this fall (read:  I was lazy and used my PE Exam as an excuse), I opted not to run the Thanksgiving day race.  It was colder than I was counting on, and I didn't see anything to be gained by spending $20 on a race which I wasn't prepared for after spending a week out in the woods in the rain looking for deer.

So Thanksgiving came and went, I ate too much (like everyone else), and then it was time to head south for work.  I spent the last 2 weeks in Mississippi doing bridge inspections.  I liked Mississippi - the people are nice, the weather was warmer than here, and the food was really good.  There is barbeque everywhere - you step out the door in the morning, and immediately smell the smokers from the various barbeque places that have been going since 6 am.

And why didn't I blog about this while I was there?  Well, for one thing, there was no running.  I had scheduled a full 2 weeks off after Thanksgiving - the 2 weeks in Mississippi.  For another, I was just tired.  Inspecting all day, day after day, with no days off until we came home.  Usually I was ready to hop in bed as soon as possible.

Now that I'm back, I've started my winter schedule.  The weeks off, combined with eating too much, have really taken a toll on my conditioning.  I feel almost like I'm starting over.  I've done 12 ugly, slow miles this week, all of it "easy", with little quality.  The only consolation is that I have ran 4 days - consistency seems more important right now than mileage.

Back to the endless inspection reports that I now have to write...

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

I Think I Can, I Think I Can...Maybe Later Though (Finishing the series on motivation)

Have you ever tried to quit something cold turkey?  People do this with smoking, and it almost never works.  We have no willpower.  Or more correctly, we have a limited amount of willpower.  It is physically draining to fight a major urge, like an addiction.  At some point, we've got no fight left.  You see it all the time in dieting - a person eats smart and healthy, denying themselves the foods they love and fighting their urges as long as they can, then I - I mean, er, they, find themselves in the bakery at the grocery store...

Willpower is a limited resource, just like energy during a run.  Nobody has the resources to do everything they should AND prevent themselves from doing all of the things they shouldn't.  If we did, well by now you get the idea - rich, thin, setting a PR every weekend, etc.

So how do we beat a system that is designed such that the harder we fight, the more assured we are to lose?  We stop fighting hard, and start fighting smart.  We're smart, right?  Damn right!

Barriers don't always work against us.  They have no motive, they aren't for or against us, they are just there, and we move in one direction or another because of them.  We need to build our own barriers, barriers that direct us away from failure.  Let's practice, with the examples of smoking and dieting.

An active barrier to smoking would be tough - short of putting a mousetrap in the cigarette package, there aren't many options.  Passive options are better, because you think about them less - they become part of your lifestyle more easily.  Things like only taking a set number of cigarettes with you to work, telling your coworkers that you're trying to quit and not to give you any more under any circumstances.  Removing the cigarette lighter from the car so you can't smoke in there.

Dieting comes with more plentiful ideas, and is a great example because food is omnipresent, whether you are a runner or not.  In the first post we talked about the idea of locking up the candy bowl as an active barrier, or not having candy as a passive one.  But how do we keep me, er, I mean, our hypothetical person who may or may not have a love of chocolate chip cookies, out of the bakery at Kroger?  For starters, I don't go there.  I don't buy anything on the cookie isle unless I absolutely have to.  And when I feel the urge coming on, I don't hit it head on.  I make myself accountable by telling someone (my wife typically), setting a goal, and placing whatever it is I want as the reward for reaching that goal.  Shame from failure, or from disappointing others, can be a powerful tool - fear of this shame makes a powerful barrier.

So how can we apply this to what we really want - running success?

We have to use barriers to eliminate barriers.  Confusingly simple, right?  I know personally, my own reasons for skipping a morning run tend to be getting out of bed, having enough time to both run and get ready for work, and being able to push past those days when I just don't feel like running without any specific explanation as to why.  Getting out of bed in the morning is hard.  I'm a morning person, once I've escaped from the smotheringly comfortable confines of my blankets, but it is so easy to "just lay here 5 more minutes".  So what do I do?  Multiple alarms, spaced about a minute apart, in multiple locations around the room.  Annoying, buzzing, beeping, dinging, multiple active barriers to me sleeping in and missing a morning run.

Once I get up, I need a little time to get fully awake, time to plan my clothes for running once I've seen the weather (winter running requires me to determine how many layers I'll need on a day-to-day basis), have a little coffee and a little water, and get going.  And I'd love to just get going - if I could only find my shoes, or gloves, or that one particular garment that I'm missing.  This is a passive barrier that has to be overcome.  Typically, I try to do as much as I can just before heading to bed that will grease the wheels for the next morning.  This means gathering running gear and placing it by the door, preparing anything I can for work (such as lunch), etc. - any thing that I can do to shorten the amount of time I need to get ready (which lengthens the time I get to spend on running), I try to do.  To make sure this happens, I need strategically placed reminders - active barriers to things that I have to do.  For example, I put my running watch right by my toothbrush - gotta brush my teeth every night, and the watch sitting there tells me to go get my shoes/clothes organized while I'm brushing.

What about those days where you just don't think you have it in you?  This is where guilt and shame find their use.  Guilt will drive a person to confess to something even after they've gotten away with it.  You can punish a child simply by telling them that you are ashamed of what they did.  This should tell you all you need to know about the power of these as motivational tools.  A lot of people in a lot of advice arenas (weight loss, quitting smoking, exercise, etc.) will tell you that you should "make yourself accountable" to someone else if you want to reach your goals.  This is right, but I say just telling friends and coworkers doesn't quite take it far enough, you need to hit it with everything you've got available.  We're not young athletes training for a high school race here, where if we fail, "you tried your best" covers it.  We're grown-ass men and women.  If we make an honest effort and come up short, so be it, but if we can't set a goal and work towards it, what kind of people are we?  Making yourself accountable to others is good - announce intentions on Facebook, tell spouses and coworkers what you're doing, hell, make bets with people about it (let your wallet keep you accountable).  That's easy, when we fail it is easy to find people who are willing to be ashamed of us to help motivate us.  But we need to be accountable to ourselves as well, shame and guilt have to work together.  We need real, tangible, visible reminders of what we're working toward, and what the consequences of failure are.  Your previous race times compared to the goal for that race could work (as someone who likes to race, it works for me).  How about a picture of you in the best shape of your life, taped to the mirror where your reflection can easily show you that you're not in the best shape of your life?  Guilt barriers are pretty personal, so everyone has to come up with their own.



When I started writing this series, I had some really good ideas, but as writing the posts became delayed more and more (why did this take 3 weeks, you might ask?  Tune in, my next post will tell you all where I've been lately), the ideas have slipped away.  I really need to start jotting down notes as soon as I have a good idea for writing, because a good idea slips away so fast, it goes from something profound to something mediocre in just a few hours of waiting.  I had a good ending in mind here when I started this post (weeks ago), now I have nothing more than a recap.  And since my page shows the last 5 blog posts, I'm not even going to take the time to write a recap.

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