From 2009-2011, I was pretty deep into the long course triathlons. My mentor at the time (and training partner) was a good friend Pete Jacobs.
Every Monday morning at 7am, we would head out on our weekly long run.
This was 24-30km, either done at base pace (maybe 4:45-5:15min/km pace), or what’s called a “progression run” (getting faster over the course of the run, finishing at 4:00 pace).
We often ran a similar loop – starting with hills out along Sydney’s Northern Beaches, around Narrabeen, the golf course… then pretty flat and fast home to Freshwater.
These runs would be a couple of hours, but the interesting thing was that they usually would feel better and better as we went.
Literally the first 10km became the warmup.
Joints felt creaky, the body was tired, the caffeine from the morning coffee still hadn’t hit maybe…
Whatever it was, around 10-15km, we would “come good” and be able to pick up the pace, smile a little more, and things would get easier. It would hit like this second wind “life force,” totally out of the blue, almost every time.
A lot of times we feel stuck on something – in our work, our business… Literally nothing is moving forward. Things move to a grinding halt.
One option is that we’re at the 10km mark and we’re done. We call it quits and the run is over there and then, we ring a friend for a ride home. Nothing wrong with this.
The other option is that we pause for a moment, regather our posture, and realise that while for other people this is the end of their run – that they only ever run 10km – we are just warming up.
When you play a longer game, it’s going to take a longer time just to start to figure things out. Having patience is an asset, and it can only come when we buy into the idea that it’s not going to be a sprint.
