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Reasons You Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect
As runners, many of us are Type-A personalities who strive for perfection in every area of our lives. Whether we seek to perform our best, eat as “clean” as possible, do all the “little things,” or never miss a day of our prescribed training plan, we sometimes take our perfectionism a step too far. Instead of focusing on unattainable flawlessness, runners (and all other perfection seekers) should aim to be better than before, but never perfect, as discussed below.
Decreased Mental and Emotional Stress
Often we build up certain ideals in our heads, such as “clean eating,” certain training plans, or weekly goals), and we turn these arbitrary objectives into end-all, be-all scenarios. One slip-up can cause emotional stress when we feel like failures for having chosen to enjoy a piece of cake on a friend’s birthday or because we were too tired to hold that final plank pose. Instead of continually searching for an “A+” in your health regime, concede to yourself that perfection is unattainable. As an alternative, strive to be better than you were before, whether that is eating one fewer serving of sugar than yesterday (as opposed to attempting to cut out sugar cold turkey), or performing one more core routine this month than previously.
Reduced Injury Risk
Runners often avoid listening to their bodies in order to follow their set training plans. However, when you decide not to be “perfect” and to instead allow your body to dictate when to take days off or when to cut a workout short, your risk of injury is drastically reduced. At the end of the day, no one wins an award for showing up to the starting having completed all of the assigned workouts at the sake of his or her health.
Greater Happiness
When you give up the pursuit of perfection, you give up the unhappiness that comes with such an unattainable goal. Runners who seek perfection in their lives often associate their daily satisfaction with how well they were able to control factors that are typically difficult to control, or uncontrollable altogether. For instance, small deviations, such as having to take a day off from training due to excruciating shin pain, can lead to a ruined day because of the mental anguish associated with purposely avoiding exercise. By rationalizing that it’s better to be healthy than perfect, this self-imposed unhappiness disappears.
Recognizing Irrational Thoughts in Training
Many runners are Type A personalities who struggle with seeking perfectionism within a sport that is difficult to control. For serious runners, depression and anxiety can play a significant role, especially when factors outside of their control such as bad weather, injury, or a poor race performance. In some instances, these setbacks can lead to a downward mental and emotional spiral, marred by irrational thinking. Recognizing these irrational thoughts and replacing them with rational ones is crucial for the mental well being of the athlete.
Training
The mental aspect of training is just as important as the physical side, but is often overlooked. However, the way that training is approached from an irrational and rational perspective can have many implications on how a runner performs. A common occurrence is to experience a bad workout and allow the incident to spiral into thoughts of being slow, out of shape, overweight, or washed up. When a runner lets these thoughts consume him or her, decreased confidence and even self-fulfilling prophecies of poor race performance is the result. Instead of immediately resorting to these irrational thoughts, a runner should approach workouts as rationally as possible, realizing that they simply provide the runner with data. For instance, instead of assuming a bad workout is a sign of impending doom, factors such as diet, sleep, stress, and training fatigue should be analyzed before jumping to conclusions.
Racing
Runners can succumb to irrational thoughts as a result of races, such as in the days leading up to a big race. Often, runners convince themselves they no longer want to compete, despite months or even years of training. Worrying about performance, comparing themselves to others, feeling pressure to succeed, and being concerned about embarrassment or letting others down are all common irrationalities. Instead, runners should remind themselves why they enjoy racing, and look at the big picture—including the fact that running performance is not equivalent to personal worth. A second important factor is to only worry about controlling the controllables, meaning to ignore uncontrollable aspects, such as race weather, opponents, or external pressure.
Recovery
Runners are notoriously bad at recovery because they are not good at taking time off. Instead of irrationally believing that fitness will be lost when taking time to heal, runners should realize that recovery is one of the most important components of training and that fitness gains cannot be made if the body is not given time to properly rest.
Why a DNF is the Best Thing to Happen to Me
This is a guest post by Hollie Holden. Photo by Adam Gilbert Ciuk.
It was supposed to be just another training run, with the bonus of aid stations and a medal. It should have been reasonably comfortable and ‘just’ another stepping stone towards my 50 mile goal in a couple of months time. It should be achievable enough that I can run again the following day but I ended up finishing with only 12 km clocked on my Suunto at the Run Like A Girl Be Fearless trail marathon in Squamish. I DNF’d and have decided to DNS the Squamish 50 mile race, along with any other race I had in my schedule leading up to that day.
I need a break.
It’s just not fun any more—what’s the point of doing something if you don’t enjoy it?
In the months leading up to the race I felt tired. I never really had any great long runs. Sure I got through them, including a beautiful trail marathon on Orcas Island, but it was always a bit of a struggle. I am self-employed with a work schedule that can only be described as a yo-yo—I love the fact it gives me the flexibility to run up a mountain midday on a Wednesday, but oh man it can be a struggle when you have mountains of deadlines pulling you in a million different directions all at once. Add in ultra training and there is zero time or energy left for anything else.
I even rolled my ankle a couple of times. I NEVER roll my ankles, often joking how strong they are. This led to a minor injury, or niggle, that I’ve been battling for about 8 weeks now. I can run through it but its annoying. I felt like everything was starting to fall apart.
But it was all going to be totally fine. I had a trip to California for a week planned at the end of May, goals for that week were to just sit on my butt by the pool in the sunshine! After a week of R&R ,I would feel fresh and ready to tackle the last 2.5 months of hard training before Squamish 50!
It didn’t quite work out as planned.
I got to the start line of the RLAG Be Fearless trail marathon feeling pretty uninspired, unmotivated and probably had already mentally checked out before the race had even started. Not ideal. But us runners are a stubborn lot, so I lined up amongst friends and gave it a go. Can we just pause here for a minute and mention how awesome the running community is here in Vancouver? So many friends running the race, volunteering at aid stations, as course marshalls, sweeping and race directing—the highlight of the day for sure.
I sometimes take a while to warm up and get in to a groove but the groove never happened. 3 km, 4 km, 5 km, still feeling tired. Friendly racers passed me by, trying to chat to me about the beautiful views, the perfect conditions, but I was grumpy. Normally I would jump at the chance to chat with others and maybe buddy up to help pass the time, instead I wanted to be alone. Uphill, downhill, flat, all a struggle. When a long, non-technical downhill felt like a battle I knew there was absolutely no way I could do the full 42.2 km. I fought back tears of frustration at 7 km and by 8 km, I had decided to find the nearest route back to the start. I passed friends hiking and cheering along the way and burst into tears when they asked me how I was feeling. I just couldn’t contain it anymore, it was time to stop.
It is SO HARD deciding to DNF. When you run ultra marathons for fun, you are a strange type of person—someone who is comfortable with being uncomfortable. Stopping is never normally an option and you do whatever you need to do to get to that finish line. This day was different. Honestly, in the months leading up to this day, I had spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not a 50 mile ultra marathon was really something I wanted to do right now and I think I had already decided that it wasn’t. I just couldn’t admit it to myself at the time. I needed this race as a wake up call.
So at aid station 3, only 11 km in to the race, I told the friendly, supportive volunteers that I was calling it a day. There was nothing physically wrong with me. I didn’t want them to worry, just tell me which way to go and I will take myself back to the start line and officially DNF. I arrived back at the start a couple kilometers later and bumped into friends who were just about to start sweeping the course. Again, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I am not sure if I was happy to be done, sad that I didn’t finish, frustrated with myself or just relieved. But either way I still think it was a good decision to quit so early on.
The race directors were lovely. They each came to check up on me, even giving me a finisher’s keyring despite my DNF. My bad experience is by no means any reflection of a bad race—the route was beautiful, the course well marked and all the volunteers were amazing.
A year ago I was also tired and couldn’t get through the day without a nap. But that’s just because I run so much, right? Turns out I have iron deficiency anemia, with fatigue being the main side effect—physically and mentally. It’s fairly common amongst runners, females in particular and can be managed with supplements. I have been taking multiple iron supplements a day to build my levels back up and they definitely help. I don’t feel the need to nap so much anymore. So is it just my anemia holding me back again? I’m not so sure.
Maybe its physical, maybe its mental, maybe I’m overtrained, burnt out, bored. I’m not sure I will ever really know the answer. The one thing I do know is that it is so important to listen to your body. Running is a big part of my life, I am never going to give it up. But for now, I am going to remove the pressure, throw away any sort of schedule and just go with the flow. Fancy climbing a mountain today? Sure. Fancy lifting weights instead? Why not. Need to just stay in bed? No problem.
When the people around you seem to be going from strength to strength, running further, running faster, smashing PBs and accomplishing their goals, you can’t help but get swept up in the excitement and push for these things yourself. But I am not everyone else. I am me, and perhaps what is right for them is not right for me right now. I used to be able to run 100 km a week, now I average 40-50 km. I’ve ran 60 km in one go before. Right now I’m lucky if I reach 15 km. My 1/2 marathon PB is 1:41, I’d be lucky to hit 1:50 these days. It’s hard and frustrating to not be able to do the things your friends can do, run as much, as far, or as fast as I used to. But i think, if I cut my losses now, forget my long distance goals and listen to my body, I’ll be better off in the long term.
So that’s what I’m going to do—this summer I will be running shorter, running happier, running with zero pressure and I am going to come back stronger. My only goal is to reignite my passion for running again. And you know what, I feel so much happier already.
Ways to Reframe for Improved Running
Photo of Mireille Sine. Photo credit: Andres Medina.
One of the most powerful tools a runner can use to improve his or her mental game and subsequent running is the reframing technique. Effective use of the technique requires the athlete to “reframe” a negative thought or situation into something positive, which has important implications for performance. Listed below are common reframes and why they are effective.
Training
Negative Thought: “I can’t hit my splits; I’m never going to perform well on race day.”
Reframe: “I’m learning about my limits and am being provided with great data to figure out what I can change in order to improve my workout for next time.”
Why it works: All too often, athletes approach their workouts from an emotional perspective instead of a rational one. By reframing that workouts purely provide runners with data that they can learn from, athletes are able to approach the factors that affect their performance more rationally. For instance, a “bad” workout may help the runner realize that his or her nutrition, sleep patterns, or recovery are inadequate and that improving those areas will lead to performance gains.
Lifestyle
Negative Thought: “My workout is going to go poorly because I did not get enough sleep last night.”
Reframe: “Working hard when I am disadvantaged will help me perform my best when I am well-rested in the days leading up to the race.”
Why it works: Focusing on the factors that we are unable to control (such as too little sleep due to external factors) wastes mental and physical energy. By acknowledging that these are uncontrollable instances that will not affect us on race day helps us to focus on taking our training one step at a time while realizing the big picture, which is working hard every day towards improvement.
Competition
Negative Thought: “My arch-rival showed up; what if he/she beats me?”
Reframe: “Competition brings out my best.”
Why it works: Sometimes athletes get so caught up in what they feel “should” happen during competition (ex. that they must win, must PR, must place in their age group, etc.) that they forget why they enjoy racing in the first place. This reframe helps athletes remind themselves that racing is not always about the end result, but also about the process. While winning is nice, a personal record performance is better in the long run, and focusing on the big picture can relieve the pressure to perform in a certain way.
Tackling Your Mental Game
To run your best, a number of factors come into play: you must be physically fit, determined and arrive to the starting line uninjured. However, an often overlooked aspect of racing is the mental game. Running, more so than perhaps any other sport, is extremely dependent on mental toughness and the ability to push your body through boredom, pain and weakness. Below are three strategies to help you tackle your mental game and improve your running ability.
Cognitive Reframing
Have you ever gone into race day, barraging yourself with negative self talk before the race has even begun? Examples include complaining about the weather, questioning the quality of your training and evaluating the way the course will affect your time. While this negativity may seem harmless, the truth is that it weighs you down and can lead to slower times. According to sports psychologist Dean Hebert, the reframing technique is one of the best mental game tools in a runner’s arsenal Instead of saying, “the hills will slow me down today,” a positive reframe would be, “the hills will help me showcase how tough I really am.” Or, instead of worrying about a competitor beating you during a race, you can reframe the situation positively by pointing out to yourself that competition brings out the best in every competitor. Small changes in mindset like these can make a big difference.
Developing a Mantra
Common areas of weakness that runners often complain about having are the tendency to slow down at the end of the race or give up during the middle miles of a long run. For these runners, the development of a mantra can be helpful. Mantras are short phrases that can be repeated over and over throughout the race that help the brain focus on positivity. Mantras include “I am strong,” “one more mile,” or “I belong.” Mantras are just one small change a runner can make to improve his or her confidence, as they condition the brain for greater self-belief.
Visualization
Visualization is a technique often touted by sports psychologists because of its proven effectiveness in helping a runner achieve his or her goals. In the weeks and months leading up to a race, runners should visualize themselves at various points on the course doing positive things, in as great of detail as possible. For instance, a marathoner might visualize him or herself standing at the starting line of the race, wearing the exact same clothes he or she plans to wear on race day. The visualization would include feeling strong and confident. In the beginning miles, the runner should visualize the feeling of strength and following the race plan set forth, while also feeling energized for the long road ahead. Contrary to popular belief, it is recommended to also visualize negative aspects of the race, such as feeling discomfort or struggling during the middle miles, but to then visualize bringing yourself away from the negativity and rising above it, stronger than before. Finally, visualize yourself crossing the finish line with the clock reading your goal time, and how good it will feel to finish. This strategy is so important, that many elites even schedule visualization into their daily training regime!