Since I started tracking my runs in May of this year, I’ve logged nearly 750miles. Some of it has been long slow distance runs, some slow uphill and fast downhill in hill repeats and some has been either on a track or a treadmill running as fast as I can for a period of time then running more slowly for a quick recovery then repeating the pattern over and over again in an attempt to gain some speed.
During my 7.5mi hill repeat run this morning I had quite a bit of (cold and soggy) time to reflect on why I find the structure of the work of training so fulfilling. I learned more than just the _value_ of hard work from my parents – I learned _how_ to work hard – that often hard work means being up long before many others have gone to bed and that it’s incredibly addictive. Both of my parents absolutely are (were in the case of my father) not only incredibly intelligent but also massively hard workers. My mom went to undergrad full time taking overloads every quarter and graduating a full year early while raising me (which was no easy task), keeping our household running and commuting an hour each way to college. She graduated with some crazy awesome like 4.569 GPA and I cannot even count the number of mornings a week (though it was close to 7) that she rose at ungodly hours of the morning (think 3am) to study or get her other work done. She went on to do her grad work while working full time and my father went to (I think) both undergrad and grad school while working full time as well. Both of them spent every weekend working outdoors to keep our property, garden, nursery, driveway and house (that they designed and built by hand) all in better shape than any national park that I’ve visited. Clearly they set a fantastic example of what can be accomplished through pure dedication and incredible effort.
I guess I picked up a lot of that by example – though I can’t claim that I deliver anything close to the output of those two people. Funny thing is, I guess I figured out at some point that I could make up for lack of a lot of areas (raw intelligence, athletic ability, etc.) by expending great amounts of effort toward incremental improvements. I finally hit a stride in applying this in the latter two years of college. My first two years were what you could nicely call “under-performing”. For some reason my Jr. year everything just clicked and I nailed the remainder of college. My secret? Endlessly copying my class notes over and over and over again. I realized that I can read any number of pages and not really absorb anything on them but if I wrote notes on the material it forced my brain to process it on some level and then by repeating it by copying it I was able to learn it or commit it to memory – sometimes based on how or where I wrote it. Once this approach brought me success I repeated it and that became my incredibly labor intensive but highly effective route to collegiate success.
I’m pretty sure the same thing applies to training. I’m not a naturally gifted athlete. I’m not fast, I’m not lean and running is never, ever easy for me. Hell, I’m barely on the ‘not’ side of being _very_ overweight. I am getting better, though, and it’s absolutely because I log the time and I perform the repetitive tasks that drive that improvement. And it’s way better and a hell of a lot more fulfilling to wake up at ass o’clock and know that I’m going to go tackle a hill repeat and that damn it I’m going to do it 5 times today because last time I could only get through 4 than to wake up and think “I have to go do 45 minutes on the dual ellipse machine because I’m fat”. It’s meant that I’m starting to view my body as being capable of great strength and endurance rather than something that should be hidden by baggy clothing.
Don’t get me wrong - I NEVER want to get out of bed and I never think “Oh goodie! I’m going to go run up and down hills for a few hours”. I do make a deal with myself each morning that first I will get out of bed. Then I will just drive to the gym (I leave my makeup there all week so that I’m pretty much forced to go) and I always tell myself that I will just get started easy and see how I feel – that if I continue to feel really terrible that I‘ll take it easy or just do a little and then hit the shower. I pretty much never stop, and I never EVER regret the workout when it’s done. That’s what keeps me going. I’m completely addicted to the feeling of smug self-satisfaction I get after I’m done. Especially so on those days when I feel like hell or really didn’t want to do anything. Oh, and extra double that when it’s raining. Which it really doesn’t ever do here very much at all.
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