Falling in love with the process

Hi Everyone!

No races were run this weekend from our crew. However, for those of you who haven’t seen the running news, the Australian marathon record was just broken by Sinead Driver (2:21:34) who happens to be a 45 year-old runner who took up running at the age of 33! If you needed a lil’ dose of inspiration there it is.

For most of us right now I believe there’s a little fallow period of competition which is a good thing. Time to recharge the batteries and do what energizes you vs. what you “should” do. Sometimes those two things align and sometimes they take some effort. For now, just do what makes you feel good and start gathering up your mojo for the new year.

This is also the time of year we should be thinking of falling in love with the process. The goals and structure will come, but it is so much easier when you layer them on top of a routine that already comes easily. Whether I’m “training” or not, I will always meet friends for social runs. I will always show up to workouts – whether to jog and cheer or join in at varying levels – depending on where I’m at. I will pretty much always say yes to a running invitation to catch up with a friend. I love all of that and doing those things is a natural riverbed of routine. I can scale up and intensify when I’m training, but it’s a matter of degrees vs. all or nothing. I’ll be honest – I’m also enjoying sleep a little more these days, so much of my routine has shifted to a little later in the morning. I’m liking this new process as it leaves me feeling a little more peppy and energized in my runs. As I start to lean in in the months ahead, I’ll probably hold onto this routine.

I may have written earlier about my struggle to enjoy the process of swimming. I signed up for a race in the summer in the hopes that if I forced the routine and had a goal I had to train for, it would become natural and I would grow to love it. I love the idea of swimming and I love having swum. But after my race I dropped swimming like a hot potato. I had the time, I had the energy, I knew the routine and the procedures – I just did not love the process. But now. My 13 year old daughter is into swimming and wants to go with me. I haven’t missed a session with her yet and I find I really look forward to these times together. (Those of us with teenagers know how rare and cherished chosen time spent together is!) Who knows where this will lead, but for the first time in my life I am looking forward to swimming and am doing it regularly (ish – we’re no Olympians). But my point is that I’ve finally found a process that I love enough that it gets me in the pool without a struggle.

I don’t know what the process will look like for many of you. But if you constantly have to fight yourself and push yourself to get something done, you probably aren’t loving the process, and just forcing it might not make you fall in love with it. And if you don’t love it when it’s easy, you really won’t love it when it’s hard. So now’s a good time to experiment with different routines, maybe throw out invitations to new running buddies, show up to hard things but make them easy (ie. Wednesday workouts – show up and jog and finish with a Starbucks – you might find you get hooked). Figure out what you love and what is the easiest path of resistance. Don’t make it hard! That’s your only goal for December. Then in January all you have to do is to start scaling up gradually on something you already love.

On to tomorrow’s workout: Back to Lakeshore and Leslie – 6:05 Drills, 6:15 GO!

This one is still working on steady volume.

8-12 x 600 w 1 min rest. Here’s the key: keep them tempo. This is a VERY different workout than 6-8 x 600 w 1:30 rest which we might do in the summer or closer to a competition. These 600’s should be closer to your tempo pace. If you’re like me, probably ~10 seconds slower per 600 than your Vo2max pace. The first few should feel pretty comfortable and you can talk. It’s short rest so the intensity will build. The idea is to get the pacing right so you can get the volume in. Again – this is NOT intense. It’s a pace you could hold all at once, but we’re breaking it up with short rests so you can accumulate the work without too much strain. If there is time at the end we can finish with 4 x strides.

If doing this by time: 10 x 2 min ON, 1 min OFF.

That is all – see you in the am!

Seanna