Life seems to be conspiring against me. I fear I have a slight infection in my sinuses … I say ‘fear’ because this is a self-diagnosis. It is not that bad, but just enough to knock my pace a little and to force more stops (mainly to clear the nasal passages) than I would usually take. I also have a sore foot, right on the top. I put this down to twisting my ankle last weekend, but I am not completely convinced. Anyway, like the sinuses, it is not that bad… I will ‘suck it up’ until my foot falls off, then I may have to take it a little more seriously. Lastly, my workload is reaching warp speed. This always presents a dilemma… more work means more income… but more work also means more pressure and less time to do the things that I can spend more income doing.
The upshot of all this moaning is that another weekend has gone by and I haven’t done a long run. I did a short one early Saturday morning, 6.5 miles to Blackcap and back… running right past BGG’s door… but it was slow and hard going. But worse than all the above diatribe… is that I’ve realised I’m at risk of not enjoying it. Running is becoming a chore. The battle to constantly improve is becoming stressful. Which begs the age old question (and one that MLCMM asks himself on a regular basis in his excellent diaries): WHY DO I GO RUNNING?
For me the answer is actually quite easy. I run because I love that feeling of self-propelled motion in the hills. I love the feeling when you reach the top of a long hard climb… I love running along the ridges… I love flying down the hills slightly out of control. I think back to the runs I have enjoyed most and they have been those run in horrendous weather conditions, those when I have discovered, by design or by accident, new routes and new bits of the South Downs… those shared with friends. I won’t forget for a long-time a recent run when BGG and I found ourselves flying down Itford Hill in the rain, oblivious of the world around us… well until we discovered our shorts were foaming.
This for me is what running is about and what provides my motivation. I am lucky to be able to run in a beautiful part of the world; I literally have the South Downs on my doorstep. So why do I want to improve? It is not to achieve personal bests… or to beat the next man over the finish line… I want to improve so I can run further… so I can run the fells in the Lake District… so I can run the mountains in the Alps. That’s why I push my boundaries… so I can unlock the doors of more experiences… explore new places, just me, my feet and my friends. Running for the sake of running… running free.
So with the South Downs on my doorstep and a plethora of good running mates scattered around the town, why am I getting stressed? This last week, between meetings and spending a lot of time strapped to a thundering Virgin (*sniggers*), I have been reading quite a lot about the motivation of running and eventually have reach some kind of conclusion… but it’s not a conclusion that’s going to be easy to bear. The root cause of my running stress is my lovely Garmin. I love my watch… it tells me exactly how I am performing; my distance, my pace, the route, elevation, splits… and it all downloads when I get home so I can pour over the stats. Sadly, it also lets me assess my performance in real time. If I haven’t run faster and farther than the day before I start to agonise… I start to over compensate, I don’t listen to my body and it all goes Pete Tong.
So I have reached a conclusion, and actually the answer is really easy… but the very thought strikes terror through my soul. I can’t possibly run without my watch… I would rather run naked. Since I started this two footed adventure I have always had some form of technology recording my every step. Nope, it is not going to work.
I tried on Saturday morning… it should have been an easy one up to Blackcap and home; easy because I know the distance, I know the route and I could check the kitchen clock out and in. But no, as I went out the door the watch had found itself on my wrist. I did reach a compromise by switching off the pace and only having time and distance illuminated on the screen. But (and I guess you have got there a lot quicker than I did) that is all the data you need to calculate pace; and yes, a mile into the run I was struggling and starting to fret that my pace had eased up above 10min/mi.
I’m a junkie… addicted… but they say the first step is being able to admit you’re addicted. “My name is CharlieCat and I am addicted to my Garmin”.
But my next run I AM GOING TO GO OUT WITHOUT IT. I AM. TRUST ME. IT’S TIME TO GO COLD TURKEY.
Then without the data, without the stress, I can start enjoying my running again. Will it make me a lazy runner? How will I be able to measure progress? Will it actually make any difference? The answer at the moment is that I don’t know. But I sense that by leaving the data behind I will become more attuned to my body which in turn will make me a better runner but more importantly, a happier runner. I am not saying that I will always leave it at home… there will be times when it will be sensible to take it… but for the home runs I’m going to give it a go.
All I have to do now is avoid the temptation and battle the withdrawal symptoms.
Wish me luck.
August lashes out in volcanic fury
