I like numbers. I actually get a considerable amount of joy out of numbers and interpreting and analyzing data. Since I was young I was always pretty decent at math and I like to think I made numbers my bitch. There may have been a brief period during university where numbers definitely made me their bitch, but we still get along pretty well. If these first few sentences alone didn’t convince you that I’m a mega dork, a huge part of my job is literally analyzing numbers and data (I’m an Applications/IT Analyst).
Running involves a lot of numbers. Numbers that show you when you get stronger, that help you set and attain goals, that push you to do things you never thought you could do before. They help you figure out how fast you need to go if you want to finish a race within a goal time, they scare the shit out of you when you realize just how many meters of elevation you’ll need to ascend to summit the peak you’re after. Over the last year I’ve started to pay a lot more attention to these numbers and figures as I have a general goal to go faster. And apparently further. I’ve definitely become faster and I’ve definitely logged more mileage than ever before.
I have two factors to thank for my faster feet and my more ambitious mileage goals: speedwork and Strava. Completing speed workouts at paces that connect my current abilities with the goals I have are expanding the limits of my body. Having a tool like Strava to record, track and understand that progress is pushing me to set more challenging goals. Having a way to look back at what you’ve accomplished in a week, a month or a year is really important to me. I’ve always been a perfectionist and it’s really easy to develop a very skewed sense of where I’m at. It can be difficult to take pride in something I’ve done or accomplished if I have no real way to measure it. Probably my favorite feature of Strava is that it records and identifies when you set personal best times for certain distances, even on a regular old day, and it can recognize when you have completed the same route before, comparing your efforts and showing YOUR progress. Sometimes when I am pushing my pace and I want to just stop or back off, what keeps me going is that I am so close to beating past-Liz. Anyways, I’ll stop my Strava love-fest for now.
So yeah, numbers. I have a spreadsheet for just about everything you can have a spreadsheet for. For example, I track every dollar I spend. I like to review how much money I spend a week, a month, on what, what % did I save, what % are my fixed expenses, what % did I spend on wine. You know, normal household analytics. I don’t track my expenses this way because I have a particular need to control my spending, I have reasonable goals to save money but that’s about it right now. I have the income of an adult but basically only the responsibilities of a teenager at this point in my life, so it’s not that hard to live comfortably. All my friends are getting married, buying homes and having babies and I’m just here running around in the forest eating donuts. Keeping an eye on my money really just provides me with comfort that I know exactly where I’m at at all times and keeps me from feeling guilty or stressed if I do spend money or sign up for 7 races, or something.
Okay but the ACTUAL reason I wanted to write this post is because I had a meltdown the week before last. I let meaningless numbers suck up all of my confidence and self worth, at least for a few days. I set loose goals each week for total mileage, elevation gain and rest days. They’re built around the key workouts from the marathon training program I follow, with a little extra padding since I have a completely conflicting mission to run the Grand Canyon in two weeks (more on that later). I had a really strong week three weeks ago and put in the most mileage since running Iron Legs last summer. I started the next week with the same tenacity as the one before, but things just didn’t work out. I wasn’t feeling my second run of the week so I bailed. I felt a weird mystery (but VERY noticeable) pain in my knee half way through the week and took a few days off. I felt better by the weekend and fully intended to at least get my long run in on the Sunday, but between Saturday night’s beers and a very busy and chaotic week at work…..yeah, no. I looked at my weekly mileage, especially compared to the week before and felt like such a failure. Like I had wasted all the hard work I had put in over the last few weeks. My little Strava mileage graph thingie dipped lower than it had in months and I felt like I had fallen behind, lost time, squandered an opportunity. The more pressure I felt the less joy I associated with getting out for a run.
Then I stopped being such a stupid baby and realized something. I had it built up in my head that if I didn’t get my long run in by Sunday (the last day of the week according to Strava)…….the world would end. While in fact I could just like…..do it the next day. And move on to the next week and literally my life would be no different. I planned the following day so that I could leave work early and enjoy some sunlight, brought some delicious mid-run snacks (Creme eggs huzahhh) and a tropical house playlist that made me feel like I had just downed multiple Red Bulls, and I got that long run done. And I liked it. I think I liked it more than if I had been able to do it the day before anyways. Over the days that followed I got my speedworkouts in as planned, logged a strong mileage week and found myself reaping the benefits of some extra/unplanned rest and recovery the week before. That “crappy” week probably helped me out in the end.
I will continue to set pretty specific goals, I will celebrate when I reach or exceed them and I will continue to be disappointed if I don’t reach them. But I’m going to work harder on finding ways to do the next best thing, to readjust my expectations instead of interpreting this flexibility as failure. If I had looked past the numbers that week I would have given myself credit for taking some rest days when I felt pain, for taking the extra “free time” I had from not running much to spend more time with friends, catch up on my workload, go climbing more often than usual, SLEEP A LOT.
I know some of my friends that have no interest in running read this (HIIIIII JORDAN) so this is where I usually try and make some sort of relate-able point. I guess I’ll just say that Yoda was a bit of an ass, with his Do or Do not bullshit. Having metrics to help you reach your goals is awesome but I would rather stretch the constraints of how I reach them by a day, an hour, a few dollars, a few kilometers (or whatever it takes to get it done) than to only consider a win or lose situation.
Don’t let what you didn’t get to do erase everything that you did.
This one time I went running 