I’ve spent the last eight years coaching high school athletes in track and cross country as well as adults training for road races.  In those years I’ve coached a lot of training sessions and competitions. I’ve talked to a lot of frustrated athletes after they haven’t hit their paces in a workout or a race. They want to talk through the entire race and all that led up to it.  They tell me how many hours they slept or what they ate before the workout or race. They ask me why they were able to hit their paces the other day but not today. Sometimes we can get to the bottom of it and figure out what happened. Some of the time, though, there isn’t a reason and things just didn’t go as planned.  That’s just how it is; life and running are full of times when things don’t go according to plan, despite our preparation and desires. There seems to be a common thread to these frustrated conversations: They expect perfection from every race or workout. That simply isn’t the way things work in running. It’s not the way that things work in life, either.

Negative emotion is part of life.  You’re going to feel it. You’re going to have hard moments or hard days.  Feeling negative emotions doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong. It means you’re a human. Challenging runs are part of being a runner.  Having a difficult time on a run doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong. It means that you’re a runner.

At least half of your runs are going to be hard.  Your legs are going to feel like lead. Your lungs are going to burn.  Your brain is going to wonder what you’re doing. Half of your emotions are going to be unpleasant.  We compound the frustration with thoughts like, “I should feel better than this.” Then we’ve made the problem worse by being upset about being tired.  Letting go of the idea that good runners always feel good when they’re running will liberate us from the pressure of trying to feel amazing all the time.