London Marathon Training Week 6 of 14
The missing ingredient
When I ask you; what makes a good runner?, you will throw all the usual suspects at me. Something like:
talent
work ethic
drive
toughness
genes
Vo2 max
speed
strength
form
And so on. There’s is a word you probably haven’t mentioned. It should be on the list. And it might need to go straight to the top. Joy. I wrote it in small caps so as not to ruin the surprise.
It might seem so obvious that is doesn’t even warrant a mention. But, it might just be the very most important factor of all.
Do you bring joy into your running? Do you run for the sheer joy of it? If you strip it down, take the races and the goals away, is running, in itself, enough?
I started thinking about this after Osian Perrin came to talk with us at our training squad, just before finishing 2nd in the GB Indoor Champs as a 20yr old.
I have watched him grow from a tiny whipper snapper into the senior international athlete he is now. When he was 13-14yrs old, there was talk from some, that he was training too hard for such a young kid. When I heard the training he was doing, I thought it did sound very tough. Until I found out, it was all coming from him. He ran for the joy of it, was irrepressible, and you could see it in the way he ran. He still runs that way, the same joy in his stride, long, blonde hair flowing behind. Long may it continue.
This is a common theme.
Sure. Most of us start running because we enjoy it, we find the runner’s high and get kinda hooked. But it’s the purists, the ones who would run even if you took away all the medals, fame and money, that are the most successful.
The most important thing is to run, because I love running. I’d run in the woods on a desert island because that’s the thing I like doing best – Steve Ovett
I just enjoy it. It’s as simple as that. I get a lot of pleasure from it – Seb Coe
It’s a great joy. The only place whereby you can enjoy this world is really in a run. Because your mind will be free, good ideas will come in. That’s the moment where a human being feels free in his or her own life – Eliud Kipchoge
I’m not looking to make a living out of it. Obviously it’s nice that there’s a bit of money coming in but that’s not my goal. I just want to do my best and still enjoy it. I want to keep on enjoying it – Paula Radcliffe
With the runners I coach , some approach our sessions with their heads down and dreading it. While some are literally bouncing up and down and can’t wait to get started. This affects absolutely everything. How you look when you run, how you approach your session, how well you perform, and how quickly you recover mentally and physically.
What does any of this mean for you?
Of course you are not going to enjoy every run. Sometimes the big goals take some serious sacrifice. But, if we get too far away from the enjoyment we had when we started running, it can be very hard to get it back. The best runners I have ever met are the ones who enjoy it the most.
Maybe they are enjoying it because they are the best.
Maybe they are the best because they enjoy it most.
Think ‘flow’ not ‘force’
The words ‘joy’ and ‘flow’ are almost entirely interchangeable. It can be hard to find flow in your running. What do you do when you find it?
I had learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
—Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway knew to stop writing whilst in flow. Not to carry on until it was exhausted. That way he was more likely to find flow again the next day.
When you find flow and joy in your run, consider stopping a mile early, or reducing the intensity. You have the right to flow state and enjoyment on every run. Obviously so much life stuff can get in the way. A bad night’s sleep, injury or illness etc. But when you find flow, try to selfishly preserve it, store it for next time, not scare it away for weeks or months. A happy runner is a fast runner.
Keep a training diary, and draw a face or put an emoji after each run to say how you felt. Smiley, Meh, Sad etc. It takes 4 seconds to do this. If you have 5 runs in a row where you have not enjoyed your run, then I would say you need to change something. Obviously 5 is an arbitrary number. There is a lag, but pretty soon, a negative mind will show up in the realm of the physical. Whether it be a dip in form, injury, illness or burnout.
If you think you can push through months of sadface running because it will all be worth it when you reach your goal, you are in for a rough landing.
Start with the simple stuff
before your next run, try; Positive self-talk; tell yourself “I do this cos I love it”. Posture; Standing tall and confident makes you feel confident. Smile; Forcing yourself to smile (Kipchoge style) can actually make you happier. This all sounds like woowoo until you try it and find it works. Plus it’s all backed by science.
Therapeutic run
This is actually a session invented by Peter Coe (dad and coach to Seb) who had a very scientific approach to training. Even he had to appreciate that sometimes his athletes were just feeling run down and disheartened. He would drive Seb up to the hills above Sheffield and let him run down into the city. No watch, no pace, no time or distance measured. Purely for joy. With another of his athletes, he would let him run freely in the forest trails, again without measurement.
Is there a route you really enjoy doing? Preferably off-road in nature, but not necessarily. Go and do it purely for the love of it. Don’t measure it. Wearing a watch and not looking at it, is not the same as leaving the watch at home. You can’t trick yourself. You know the first thing you’ll do when you get home is upload it to Strava and check your average pace. Comparison is the thief of joy, especially when comparing against yourself.
Throwaway rep
800m WR holder David Rudisha would do Throwaway Reps on the track, when he wasn’t feeling confident. Just running a lap of the track with no watch on, for the simple joy of running. Sometimes I walk my kids to school and then run the mile home, in whatever clothes I am wearing. I don’t count it towards my weekly mileage. Just focus on feeling good. Can you go out and do a mile, or one stride even, as fast or as slow as you like? Just for the hell of it?
If you try this stuff and none of it works, you are over-reaching. Take a rest day, or two, or three. Until you feel like running again. The longer it takes the deeper the hole you have probably dug yourself. That’s fine, it happens to everyone. Just respect the rest and your urge to run again will return.
Remember; if you aren’t grinning, you aren’t winning (that sounded better in my head). We are running, when all is said and done, for the joy of it, life is too short for anything else. Never let a training schedule, coach or lofty goal take you too far away from the joy.
English National Cross Country Champs
My confidence is low after I got hammered in my last race (read post here). I am in the midst of marathon training so my legs are heavy. I haven’t been doing any grass sessions to prepare for this.
In short, I’m making lots of excuses.
None of them are very solid. The main thing I’m worried about is getting my ego battered again. It would be two races in a row.
I always tell my athletes to leave their ego at the door. It’s easier said than done.
On the 2hr drive to Chester, I find a way to reframe this race. Joy. Just focus on the joy of it. Being able to run around in a field with thousands of other runners. It’s a rare joy.
Get in, take the joy, get out. Don’t worry about any of the other stuff.
And I am really happy to report I managed to do this…
It is a unique and special experience, being so tightly hemmed in with other runners trying to cover uneven terrain. You are trying to race, but not trip anyone else over, tricky. Body clashes are going on all the time as everyone scrambles to get the best line.
Invasion of personal space does not apply here. You have surrendered all decorum the moment you crossed the start line.
Literally bumping shoulders with strangers while puffing and panting at max effort. It’s weird when you look at it in the cold light of day.
But when you take our 100,000yr history of running over nature as pack mammals, somehow it feels kind of right.
The race is 12km, 2 laps. My tactic is to finish lap 1 not feeling flat out and like I want to quit. I manage it. Coach Ken counts me in the 200s, but I’m not worried. Just joy. I move myself up gradually. Coming past people without spiking my adrenaline or heart rate.
In the last mile I am passing dozens of runners. It doesn’t feel like I have increased my effort, more like they are all getting tired. I enjoy riding this momentum all the way to the finish.
I could kick at the end, but for some reason, don’t, and am later left kicking myself. There so many runners, another 5 seconds could mean 10 places. But still, 165th is a big improvement on 200+.
Definitely a step up from my 5k race last week and I’m taking all the joy with me.
Book I Read This Week
Very slow build up all about our history with mountains. Right back to how they were formed, our need to conquer them, map them, lyricise them. I was finding it very dull. The last 50 pages suddenly spring to life and finish with a bang. Some of the passages really hit home;
Mountains challenge our complacent conviction, that the world has been made by humans for humans. Most of exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch.
Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of forces greater than we can possibly invoke, and confronting us with spans of time greater than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes.
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