Dreaming – RunningWell

Hi Everyone!

First up I want to say a huge Thank-You to everyone for my beautiful and thoughtful Christmas gifts! I will Blitz my body thoroughly (it is in need of a good blitzing) and the CAMH donation is right up my alley. And I absolutely love the Epic Runs of the World book. It’s a beautiful picture book, travel planner, and running nerd lore all wrapped up in one. I read a couple before bed last night. You can really picture yourself experiencing these incredible parts of the world in a very relatable way – through running! Whenever I think about travel in other senses, I often think: but what would I DO? This makes it all make sense.

This is all along the lines of what I’ve been thinking about this week. Dreaming. Scheming. Planning. Goal setting. I think many of us are taking a bit of a pause on the “full throttle” aspect of running and exercise at the moment. And we need to do this so we can come up with thoughts and ideas and dreams about what we want to do. When we’re full steam ahead and locked into a goal, we are very in the moment, which is great. We have routines, plans, expectations and deliverables. It’s fun to turn off your brain and put your head down and just work sometimes. But that mode precludes the wandering mind, the dreamy wonderings, the visions of ourselves experiencing new things.

Not all dreams can or should be realized. I had many dreams when I was younger, probably 99% of which did not pan out. I’m sure at one point I wondered if I’d be in the Olympics in something. But the funny thing is, I don’t mourn the dreams that didn’t happen. They might steer you in one direction or another, and then you can let them go as new ones appear that you hadn’t yet imagined. But they can create excitement and passion and start you moving in a direction. When I look through this Runs of the World book, I can open it up to any page and imagine running in that location. And then spinning off on my own track and probably doing countless runs that aren’t depicted. And who knows what else! Some of the runs are more hardcore than others, and some require some serious training commitment. Others are light site-seeing tours. It’s a launching pad of many ideas.

So for the rest of December, let your training guide be to allow your brain to dream up what you want to do and where you want to be. Give yourself the space and time and energy to really get into it. Don’t flog yourself for sitting on the couch and not training right now. But this is not completely passive. Dreams don’t just land on you. You have to curate them and indulge them and give them space and attention. And you might realize them. Or more likely you’ll end up somewhere just as good that you never saw coming. But at least you will have started.

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

Let’s do some cruisy 800’s and finish with some snappier 200’s. How about 5 x 800 to get us to the far end, then 4 x 200. 1:15 between the 8’s (we’re still keeping them aerobic – not going too far into VO2max territory), 3 min set rest, then 1 min between the 200’s (as long strides).

I pulled my hammy being an idiot and trying to sprint faster than my body wanted me to, so I will come out to jog, but prob not do the faster stuff. A good note to remember with me: do what I say, not what I do.

See you in the am!

Seanna