The brain and running

My brain and I were not aligned last week. I spent an inordinate amount of time negotiating with it and it took me right back to those days when I tried my hardest to negotiate with my children as toddlers or even worse, when they were teenagers. My brain simply wasn’t having any of it, there was no amount of reasoning, just a stubbornnes with zero co-operation.

At one point I really thought my brain had kidnapped my running mojo, I locked the front door so it couldn’t escape, but it bloody well jumped out of the downstairs window. I chased it down, yes, it took some time and a bit like the mental skills I talked about in Thursday’s post, it wasn’t easy but I did I manage to get it back.

Example of conversation with my brain last week

Brain – You don’t need to run today, run tomorrow! You’re running tonight in your running group, then you’ve got strength and conditioning, you do too much. Give yourself a break!!

Me – I know but I had a drop-down week last week, I really need to get back out there and get into a routine again

Brain – You’re too hard on yourself, you goal race is ages away AND you’ve got quite a lot of work to do today

Me – I know but running isn’t just about goals is it, it keeps me sane, helps me process my ideas, my thoughts, my emotions- everything, basically

Brain – Ok, ok I hear you

Me –  I know, I’ll run in the local woods, I like that run

Brain – Mmm, best not, you might get murdered, especially if you wear your headphones

Me – Yes, you’re right, I won’t go up there. Let’s compromise, how about an easy 4 miles up the track? It’s like the woods, but we don’t actually go into the woods. I’ll drive to the bottom of the track (for goodness’s sake, it’s only 0.7 miles from my house!) and we’ll run 2 miles out and back, even though my plan says a progressive 6! Are you happy with that?

Brain – Well, it’s still a bit dangerous, not many people around and it’s a bit hilly, and as I said you are tired, I’m sure your legs still hurt…….

Off I went, yes driving down to the start of my run, what on earth was going on? And did I enjoy the 4-mile run? No, not really, I should’ve been running a progressive 6 miles, but I’d compromised and wasted too much time arguing with myself that I’d literally run out of time.My body felt heavy, I felt I was running with a rock filled rucksack weighed down with responsibilities, bloody hell, who did I feel a responsibility to, who did I feel I was letting down?

The next day, a very similar conversation…

Me – We need to do a speed session this week and today is the only day I can do it.  

Brain – FFS, really? Where are we going to do this then?

Me – We could go to the old railway line, no one will see us, we can do intervals, listen to music and not have to think about it

Brain – Yes, we could but it’s early, not many people will be around and as I said yesterday, you might get murdered

Me – Big sigh, ok, thank you for keeping me safe, how about laps around the business park?

Brain – well ok, but just warning you, it’ll be busy with dog walkers and you’re going to look stupid running around the lake numerous times, sweating and puffing and panting on your own …….

I went anyway, ran a few warmup laps, a couple of hard laps

Brain – Told you so! Just give up and go home, are you sure running’s for you?

Me – Ok

I shared my running tale of woe in my running group that evening and my members were kind, sympathetic and offered my own words of wisdom right back at me, asking about my goals, what it could be that was zapping my energy and sucking my mojo out of me. We explored a few reasons, but I was just as confused as everyone else.

I’m often searching for reasons and solutions, I rarely just accept things, and this lacklustre for running was so unusual for me. I just felt weighted under a gaze, but who was looking at me? Where was this gaze coming from?  

Then it hit me… I’ve signed up to a free month’s trial of a “running app”. This was something that I’ve never done before, I’ve always written my own training plans, but now I remembered that I’d let curiosity get the better of me, I recalled that I reasoned with myself (yet again) that it would be good for me to see what the “coaching competition” was all about.   

I’d inputted my stats, my recent race times and my race goal- I didn’t add a race time, the algorithms worked this out themselves.  The training plan looked good on “paper”, nothing out of the ordinary, interval sessions that I often set myself, there was no reinvention of the wheel so to speak. I had the option to add my plan to my Garmin, I tried it, yuck! I didn’t like that, so I just made sure I knew what the session was the night before.  

Hang on, could this be the reason that I’d lost my mojo? My shiny new app with its bright red notifications, ensuring an accountability that I’m not sure I needed. Cricky, it paid me more attention than Jamie did! I didn’t get a moment’s peace, it was with me everywhere I turned, in the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen, when I was watching TV, bloody hell Winston, Big Brother’s watching you. Every morning I was waking up, knowing that I had set paces to achieve, numbers to aspire to; I know never to decide I’m going for a run the moment I first wake up, I need at least 2 cups of tea to get my body ready to move.

When I yet again failed to get out of the door for a run on Saturday, I won’t bore you with the now familiar conversation between my brain and me. I said to Jamie “you HAVE to shove me out of the door tomorrow morning, accept NO excuses from me, I have to run, even if it’s raining”. He looked at me, “trust me, it’s in my best interest that you go for a run tomorrow.” He wasn’t joking.  

Sunday

Brain – Morning! You don’t have to go if you don’t want to

Me – Yes I do!

Brain – Why don’t you…

Me – I’m going.

There are 2 major things I’ve learnt with running, the first is that the hardest part of running is getting out of the front door, the second that 100% of running is in your head.

Thank goodness I managed to circumnavigate both on Sunday, with an added bit of a glare from Jamie. I started my watch, after a mile I looked at it but guess what, my watch had died! I laughed to myself, there you go, it’s just you and the road, no distractions, just solitude, no metrics, just self-awareness of your body, your breathing, your footfall, your effort and your choice of which direction to take.

And on this run, I started reflecting about the last few weeks… how was it that deciding when to run was such a hard decision to make? On average we make between 33,000 to 35,000 total decisions each day and these are made automatically and simultaneously through information that we’ve stored subconsciously about what is good or bad. I’ve had some cracking runs in the past, runs where I’ve felt like I could run forever, win races and be asked to join the Olympic team (yep, great imagination). And yet, I often don’t automatically jump out of bed on the morning of my run, it does usually involve a series of conversations between my brain and myself, a little coaxing and cajoling. Could the presence of the running app really have made that much of an impact on my training, the app wanted me to tick off each training session achieved, “Good Job Verity!”

But they were incomplete runs, the app didn’t have space for my life, there was no option to add to the 4-mile run that was absolutely good enough that day because my mother-in-law was rushed into hospital.

Having coached many runners, I know only too well that giving them a 12-week training plan can end in disaster. I know that some runners thrive with a set pace, whilst others choke under the pressure, and I also understand the power of comparison and social media. I did, however, underestimated the impact of downloading an app, in a moment of weakness, I went against my integrity, values and instinct, I saw a new shiny thing that everyone else was doing and I thought I was missing out. But it turns out that the only thing I was missing out on was actually bloody running!