The 111st Edition

Numbers can tell us we failed, even when our body, our effort and the reality of our lives tell a completely different story.

Something to Think About

A target should guide your effort, not erase the value of everything you achieved while trying to reach it.

Something to Ask Yourself

Have you allowed one number you did not hit to overshadow everything you did well?

Personal Lesson

95.66KM. That’s how far I ran last week.

And somehow, a thought came into my head that running 95.66KM in seven days was a failure.

When I returned to London, I decided to base my training volume on distance again. I would do some speed work on the flat and enjoy a respite from the mountain training I had been doing. After months of caring more about vert and time on feet, I gave myself a specific target: 130KM.

I didn’t hit it.

But I did run 95.66KM during a busy week filled with work commitments, socialising, poor sleep in the heat and tired legs. I completed every planned strength session. I pushed to get my runs in, and some of them required genuine grit. The second half of my final two hour run on Sunday demanded that I zone in and get it done.

There was plenty there to be proud of, but that pride was thwarted by the Strava graph.

The truth is that my legs were tired and my recovery was poor. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I pushed an appropriate amount for the condition I was in. In fact, feeling as tired as I did after a flat week of less than 100KM should probably tell me that the number was never the full story.

Meeting myself where I was did not mean that I had failed. It meant that I was listening.

Running – Life’s Metaphor

Running teaches us how easily an expectation can become more powerful than reality.

We decide what success should look like, then become blind to every meaningful achievement that does not fit that picture. Life works in much the same way. We can do something difficult, brave and worthwhile, yet still dismiss it because it does not match the arbitrary number we had in our heads.

Final Thoughts

Data can be useful. Distance, pace, heart rate and elevation can help us understand our training and give it direction.

But data doesn’t tell us how much effort it took to show up. It can’t measure the stress of our work, the quality of our sleep or the grit required to keep moving when we were already tired.

The danger begins when the target stops guiding us and starts judging us.

A missed target can offer useful information, but it doesn’t automatically mean the week was unsuccessful.

Sometimes the most successful thing we can do is adjust, listen to our body and stop before our ambition becomes self destruction.

We must leave room for context. A target of 130KM does not make 95.66KM insignificant.

One incomplete bar on a graph does not cancel the runs completed, the strength work done or the discipline shown.

Success is not only found in doing everything we intended to do. Sometimes it is found in responding intelligently when reality asks something different of us.

Every day, every week, we are having a conversation with ourselves. Let that conversation be encouraging. Hold yourself accountable, but also recognise your effort.

Listen to your body. Notice what went well.

Don’t let a number turn something you should be proud of into something you call a failure.

RUN THE RUNNABLE 😉