Sweder Wrote:OK, I fess up, I’ve had these thoughts. I look at other runners with vastly more impressive times than me and I just can’t see the difference. It must be in the attitude, right? Wrong. As we all know too well it’s actually all in the training, the unrelenting hours of effort it takes to break through these barriers. We’d all like to think we can do it but when push comes to shove there are sacrifices to be made. Our good friend the Purple Plodder sets sail for Washington soon, a 3:15 fixed, trembling, in her sights. If she does it will it be because of some moment of enlightenment, some revelation, an inner glow bursting into dream-fulfilling light? Nope. It’ll be the weeks and months of eighty, ninety and even hundred miles banked, slogged out in all weathers, morning, noon and night. Focus. Determination. The will to win. That’s what separates the wannabes from the winners. I don’t have that extra edge; if I did I’d’ve been out on those freshly-hosed Shenzhen streets at the crack of each new dawn, chiseling my destiny for the races ahead.
I take my hat off to you, PP, you’re going for it. You’ve bundled your excuses into an old sack and tossed them into the Atlantic ocean. Best of luck, and please come back and tell us all about it.
If PP gets her sub 3:15 she can indeed feel proud, and thank her great attitude and hours of training. I have nothing but praise, admiration and envy.
But we're all built differently and have arrived at this physical and emotional point through a variety of routes, experiences and pieces of good luck and bad luck. It's not defeatism but realism when I say that I couldn't train for hours and hours, and run a hundred miles a week, even as the culmination of a long period of preparation, so I try not to feel inferior.
The difficulty is separating our "can't dos" from our "don't want to dos". Our limitations from our excuses. I know I'll never run a 3:15 marathon, regardless of training and coaching. But I know for sure that I can run a sub 5 hour marathon, and this makes me believe I can run a sub 4:30 marathon one fine day. And I guess this is the key thing - having a realistic idea of what you can grasp. At the moment, my training isn't good enough to get me where I know I could get to, and this is a black mark against me. I wouldn't want to be compared with someone like PP however, who is (by our standards) exceptional. Of course Paula Radcliffe would look at PP's target and think what a nightmare it must be to have such a lowly target as 3:15. So for most of us, and certainly those with even a small competitive streak, even if it's only ourselves we are challenging, we have to find where we belong on the spectrum and do the best we can to push forward all the time.
What am I saying here? I've forgotten. I think it's to say that admirable though PP is, you can only judge yourself by what you have to work with. In your case, I think you absolutely do that. Your motivation and desire, and your celebration of all those wild lopes on the hills in terrible weather, is as impressive and as inspirational to most of us as PP seems to be to you. And I daresay that even my useless current efforts might be admired by someone or other I pant past on the streets -- bizarre though that thought may be.
Crikey, I think I've just talked myself into going for a run later.
Bah!
When September ends . . . again . . .
