Yeah,
I'm going to do this as a series of posts. If I tried making it one
long post it would be wa-a-a-a-a-aaaaay too long and put to sleep
anyone who tried to read it. Much of it will be pretty “basic”,
stuff I wish I'd been told (or had had sufficient sense to ask) when
I was just starting.
Everyone
starts somewhere; where we go is mostly our choice. My first race in
2011 was a 5K, with a finish time of 49:30. It's not fast, but it was
what I could do at that time. My goals that morning were to finish,
with a time under an hour, so I was very happy. Fast-forwarding some
4 years, I did my second 5K (weird, I know). My finish time was
42:31, nearly 7 minutes faster. Though I took rather circuitous and
indirect route, I did the work to improve.
Whether
you're a speedster or a reforming couch potato, you are where you
start. That, not some other person's abilities, is basis for gauging
progress. If you're the reforming couch potato, don't be ashamed of
it. You're already making progress, because you've started. If you're
the speedster, don't be particularly proud of that. You may become a
world-class runner, but that isn't you, yet.
Growth
can be in multiple directions. You can go faster. You can go longer.
You can take on more difficult terrain. The big thing is to start,
and you don't have to choose just one growth direction. For me, 2014
and 2015 were years of going longer (specifically, more races than
the previous year) and on more difficult terrain. On the other hand,
my speed did suffer some in “flat” half marathons (though an
injury contributed some to that).
In
whatever endeavor, deciding to start is the biggest decision.
Choosing to grow, to improve, is the second-biggest decision.
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