New year, new me - right? Who was this back in January? Really committing to healthy eating, more exercise, better sleep etc. I bet all your resolutions sounded really good on the first of January, but how are they looking now? Maybe you set out to run more and get faster - and maybe that’s not happened in the two months of the year we’ve had so far so you’ve thrown the towel in and given it up as a bad job.
It’s a tough time of year when social media is flooded with ‘try something new’, ‘commit to being the best you’, ‘how to have a successful year’ blah, blah, blah. It’s great to set yourself a goal but, as we’ve learnt through previous Hard & Smart blogs, these need to be SMART goals, not just arbitrarily plucked out of thin air.
Change takes time, commitment and patience.
In April this year I will have been coached by Hard & Smart for four years. When I first started my coaching journey I naively thought I would make gains quickly and become an amazing athlete. I’m sure Mark would agree with me here if I described my training and racing enthusiasm as ‘must do it all, must stress about it all, must enter absolutely every race going’. More = best in my head.
I didn’t want to be patient, I wanted to be faster and better. If I missed a session, or a session didn’t go to plan I would immediately take this to mean I was getting unfit, or not making progress. When you look back however, at all the sessions that have gone well, you realise that missing one training day does not hinder you in the slightest.
It’s taken me four years to learn how to properly pace run sessions. Four years to bring my heart rate down from ‘absurdly high’. Four years to take my 5k time from 25+ minutes to sub 20. Four years for me to learn how to balance training and life.
So if your new year hasn’t quite got off to the start you were hoping for, don’t despair. Keep chipping away at whatever it is you’re working on and it’ll come. (It took me 13 years to stop biting my nails - ironically I only managed it the year it wasn’t my new years resolution!)
Be patient
Be consistent
Learn to rest, not quit
And put the bloody work in ;-)