Pushing On

Good evening.

We all are faced with the choice to quit. This can manifest itself in the most amazing ways. Whether it is a job, an addiction, a race, or even an activity as innocuous as gardening, you will be at a crossroads (not that Britney Spears movie) where you feel like you can’t move on. Any athlete who disagrees with the above statement is lying. Everybody wants to quit. Muscles, human biochemistry…they aren’t designed to go the lengths we want to push them. We must ask then, how do we convince ourselves to stay in motion?

Most of the mental dilettantes will tell you that you should just “push through”. They will say stuff like “you need to have the will to continue”. I don’t disagree. Or, to eliminate the faux pas of a double negative, I agree. However, I prefer to use the double negative because it conveys something more. Call it visceral, but I want my stance to remain slightly away from the “rub dirt on it” approach to sport. I actually don’t believe that pushing through is the best idea.

Consider this:
As a runner, are you not running four or five times per week? To really slap the cranium, isn’t that really just one continual run with some breaks in between? Yes, we can all make physiological references and metaphysical approaches to the logic-lacking statement I just made. However, do ponder what I just said. If you are able to run every day at 8:00, then I make an argument that you never stopped running, rather you just punctuated each run with a 22 hour break. The rest has its biophysical benefits, but it is also mentally cleansing when you can rest.

Now, unlike what your super-shorts wearing PE teacher might have said, I say don’t push through. Take a break. If, by break, you slow your pace, okay. If you sit on the side of the road for ten minutes, okay. Either way, you are “resting” your body to build and do more. Slowly over time, these breaks will get shorter and you will get faster. Though reality might not be a dinner guest with this idea, I must tell you that since you are an athlete you understand reality isn’t usually present. You push yourself beyond feasibility, going into the illogical stages more than you would admit.

The most important takeaway from this is the fact that simple breaks can extend your workout and eventually extend your performance. These subtle little differences are solely directed by your mind, and through a clean mind you can make the drug of endurance racing seem that much more potent. It is the sugar with the medicine, the Novocain before the drill. However, it doesn’t make it lose value. Every potential choice can be the slightest difference between a personal best and a complete failure. We like to err on the side of personal best.

Until next time, lux aeterna.

Race smart.

-The Mental-ist