Friday, July 23, 2010

Setting My Expectations Too High

After a great ride last night, I opted to head to dinner with the group.  I don't usually stay because of time restraints on the family, but DH and the boys had gone to the $1 movie last night while I rode and wouldn't be home any time.

After dinner, I got to talking with my run group head coach and my friend from the accident on Sunday (she came out for an easy run and dinner.)  I was talking about my run yesterday morning - and how I felt that I could have pushed myself harder (faster) than I did.

My head coach said "Your problem is that you set your expectations too high."

Hmmm...

Why isn't a tempo run at almost 2 minutes faster than my long run pace good enough?  Oh, yeah, because I hate my long run pace and want my tempo pace to be my long run pace.  I expect with all the running I do, an increase in speed should come naturally.

But...

Realistically, I didn't take training seriously last fall/winter.  Come to think of it, I've never taken running training very seriously.  Even my tri-training isn't as focused as I want it to be.  (side note: it is kind of hard to train for two endurance events at the same time...)

For ING, I didn't do the work.  I didn't put in the mileage, the speed work, the tempo runs, the long runs.  I could have done serious damage that day.  I dropped back in pace groups to a more comfortable long run pace.  I'm opting to focus on consistency, which means getting the distances in.  I should be sacrificing speed for distance.  Trying (Expecting) to increase both simultaneously is a recipe for injury (failure*).  

So, I'm going to work on wrapping my head around the 'it's good enough' idea.  Miles over Time (for the most part, I obviously still need to push myself some.)   Maybe next year, I can worry about going faster.

*No, I'm not saying your a failure if you get injured and can't train/compete.  I'm saying that getting injured is a failure to accomplish the goal of crossing the finish line.

No comments:

Post a Comment