Training Goals for 2020: Run Easy and Stay the Course

With the coming of a new year I've been thinking on my 2020 running goals. I want to be consistent and also do a bit more running with my 6 year old, Sam. He drew this for me recently: 

It's me in the woods with running clothes on

And so I've adopted a running mantra: run easy and stay the course.

It prompts me to keep moving while reenforcing how true progress takes time.

The endurance app company Strava sent out a marketing email recently which said January 19th is "Quitter’s Day", the date when the most aspiring athletes break their New Year's resolutions. C'mon guys! Can't we do better than that?!

When you haven't been working out you get an intense surge of positive energy when you first start. Then you see dramatic improvement very quickly. This probably leads to people misinterpreting their real fitness level and taking their training too seriously too fast. "Hey if I can improve by 20% in just two weeks, imagine where I'll be next year! Kipchoge eat my dust!"

No human is limited

But it doesn't work that way. I know this from my experience of running on and off for 20 years. Improving in the beginning isn't tough. For example I've got my 5k fitness down from 30 mins to the 22-23 minute range a few times, yet I never got much fitter than that. And I know that to get fitter would take many months.

To put it another way, for me at least, training to drop a 22 minute 5k to 20 minutes will probably be many times harder than it was to go from 30 minutes all the way down to 22. Math like that can make the pursuit of running seem rather Sisyphean, but in the end it's not. Ultimately I believe we run for an experience, not for times.

We also run because we believe it's healthy. But it becomes unhealthy if we're not happy. It can become downright unsustainable if we attempt to train like who we wish to be, instead who we are. When you go down that path, you're one false step away from a breakdown and winding up back on the couch with a bag of doritos in each hand watching reality TV.

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I've been consistent lately. I've built my mileage up to 60km per week and dropped 15 lbs. I've also been lifting heavy sometimes, bruh. And it finally dawned on me that what's so hard about getting good at anything isn't the planning or a stretch of good training. What's hard is to unceasingly put forth the appropriate effort.

If we're unkind to the body it will retaliate. What it wants is a healthy routine and it can only handle so much stress. It won't necessarily play along with whatever fitness aspirations we conjure up in our monkey brains. However, if we persist over time in administering an appropriate stimulus, it'll gradually provide beneficial physiological adaptations. We just need to remember to be kind to ourselves.

Marathoner Desiree Linden's favourite quote is: keep showing up. (She's even trademarking it.) For years she raced well in the biggest international races but never won, until one fateful day in Boston. There's a great lesson there that I'm working to learn.

I recently created an elaborate training plan for myself leading into spring. Then on New Years Day, I threw it out. It was putting fitness before health and prioritizing goals above the journey. If I'm true to my belief that success is the product of building and building over years, then I'm at the beginning, and avoiding "Quitter's Day" is what matters most.

I came up with more appropriate goals for 2020:

• Run 5-6 days per week
• Lift weights 1-2 days per week
• Run easy and stay the course