Even when you know all the things

Even when you know all of the things, it can still be really easy to fall into old habits, physically and mentally.

I often like to pride myself on taking a balanced approach, a consistent approach and try to improve over time etc… but it wasn’t until recently that I was reminded that I fell into old habits and thoughts without even knowing it.

I saw an instagram post that reminded me of this just today, but it didn’t click with me until about 30 minutes ago.

About 2 years ago I signed up and undertook my first Hyrox event. It is a fitness event that involves running 8 x 1km and then doing some other workouts in between.

Anyway, I was pumped to do it and have a goal to work towards. I set up my training and had about 16 weeks to get myself to a place to complete the event. As the training went on I was making some great headway, I felt my cardiovascular fitness improve loads and my endurance too, areas I have never really worked on consistently before.

Leading up to the race, I initially just wanted to finish the race, that would be achievement enough. But as my fitness was improving I was looking at how quickly I might be able to get it done and so in my head I had a time that I would liked to complete it in. It’s only natural to get a little competitive.

Once the day came and the race started and I was an ⅛ of the way in I knew it was trouble, and that I had to reset my expectations, completing and surviving was the only goal now.

That I did complete was great, I was so proud, I was also disappointed with my time. You see I had coem to read about what the average time to complete the event was, and so when I saw my time was slower than that, my brain was telling me that I was below average.

I didn’t realise it but I was comparing my self to others the whole time. I let the ‘i’m not good enough’ part of me in, and to be honest I know better than that. I thought that well, I just wasn’t that fit.

The video I watched was by a guy who is a top 15 athlete in the Hyrox sport, and they interviewer asked what you need to do to get to a higher level. His main message was that you can’t rush it. The people who are crushing it and are good at it have 10+ years of building aerobic capacity under their belt through their own forms of training. You can’t rush those result, it takes a long long time of consistent training on aerobic type work to improve, running, cycling, rowing, whatever it is, every week for years.

And here I was thinking I could start running 16 weeks out and get an average time against people who were doing this day in day out for years.

I know best of all that strength, muscle, endurance all takes time and the slow consistent approach will get you there, but yet I still fell into how habits of comparison, even when we know not to.

It’s just like being at the gym, and you see someone lift X amount of weight. It’s so tempting to think ‘oh if they’re lifting X, I should lift X’ and in some cases that might be true, but it’s the comparison that we need to be careful, we are all running our own race at our own pace.

The key is to not get discouraged, and not to quit, because we can’t be defeated if we don’t quit. And so, I’ve been back running pretty consistently for the last 8 weeks or so, going even slower than before. I can’t say I’ve loved it, but today was the first time I ran and my heart rate didn’t spike to the point where I might pass out. It was still slow, I still walked for 5 minutes, but it was slightly better.

Anyway, you know the story of the Hare and the Tortoise, well it’s got pretty good logic behind it, right.

Not sure if this is helpful, but even when it’s hard, I always think of the alternative, give up, be weak, less fit and way more miserable.

Anyway, keep backing yourself, because you’re awesome.

Lawrence x