Training plans for races changed my life. Not because I’m particularly competitive when it comes to other people, but it turns out I am interested in what I can accomplish when I focus.
I’m not made of the stuff needed to push myself until my heart might burst. I dislike pain and discomfort as much as the next gal. But that is the thing I discovered, over time, about plans: following them and inching my way forward through just enough discomfort helped me go farther and faster than I ever thought possible.
That feeling of competency translates over into other areas of my life.
I’ve been reflecting on this because I’ve been doing some self-examination about what motivates me to do anything in my life. Like any self-examination, it’s a little blurry and garbled because I’m just in dialogue with myself, in my own head, through my own perspective. Nothing is as clear to and for me as it is with other people, or in retrospect.
A theme I’m coming up against is that I know how important it is to keep my commitments to myself.
How do I know this? Part of it is the muscle memory of doing hard things without proper support. The first time I went hiking, for instance, I had zero conditioning. I went from zero to hero, but “hero” was extremely winded, red-faced, and had sewing machine legs at the top of each new section of slope.
I was lucky to be with people who were patient and, in a non-condescending way, encouraging. We were just out there in the woods together taking our time. They paused long enough for me to get a break when I needed it, not just when I’d caught up to them.
That feeling of accomplishing something step by grueling step proved addictive, but its counter was a strong aversion to trying to take on anything that big cold turkey ever again. That was the beginning of my desire to be stronger, if only to spare myself future pain.
Cautiously, I started running. At first it was only in 10-minute bursts, then 20. Someone taught me about moderating my breathing, and my cadence naturally slowed. In college, I ran my first hour-long run. The coach of our little informal running team — I got two course credits to watch running-related videos and then go for a pick-your-own-adventure run — applauded me, informing me this was a big milestone.
When I signed up for a half-marathon, it was a big deal. I took it seriously. The memory of my ill-equipped first hike still looming large, I delved into all that I’d learned in my college course and put together my very first training plan.
I stuck to that plan to the letter, both in an attempt to avoid injury but mostly just so that race day wouldn’t be pure pain.
Race day was painful, because it always is on some level, but it wasn’t scarring-level painful — the training runs had prepared me well for what it means to run tired and sore.
Fast-forward years, and I am very careful about those commitments I make to myself.
Over time, it’s become an ingrained value of mine, translating naturally to integrity and responsibility. But I don’t think it was intrinsic to me, or necessarily something my parents taught. I learned to follow through on what I say I will do because 1. I’d experienced something painful — that first hike; 2. I vowed that although I wanted to keep hiking I would get stronger so that it would never be that painful again, and then; 3. I discovered, through painstaking effort and doing the thing I said I would do — training — that it was indeed possible to get more fit and thus enjoy hiking more.
See also: running, writing, painting, and many other facets of my personal and professional life.
I think a lot about what it might mean to break the commitments I make to myself.
I do break them, of course — especially when I have too many. I bailed on a run with a friend last week because a dinner the night before went late, and I knew I wanted to save my energy the next day for painting, versus getting up super early to run tired, and then being low-energy the rest of the day.
I eat or drink poorly when I say I want to eat well or drink less. I cancel or shift appointments when something comes up.
I think some of this is normal, and part of living a life that is full and deliberate yet not rigid. But I also know when I start breaking too many of my own commitments, I have a sense of internal erosion. It eats at me and affects my mood.
So like anything else, there’s a fine line. I know small steps add up to big things — training to hike taught me this initially, then it was running races, and then it spilled over into the rest of my life. Being careful about what I commit myself to, and following through on those things — internally and externally — is a self-reinforcing habit that even when it doesn’t yield immediate results, at least springboards me forward and up.