Looking back to my earlier posts I seem to have been frequently ignoring my own advice, in spite of my desire to start being my own best friend, this best friend has not been good in the support department.
My wisdom to other runners seems to be helpful in many ways. How to increase training gradually, hints and tips for getting the best from their workouts, motivational spiel for training sessions, and recommendations for massage help when needed. I have numbers for Sports Massage, Physios, Personal Trainers that I happily pass on to others, so now tell me why I am so reluctant to use them myself to get my knee problem fixed, why I avoid visiting the doctor to get my breathing sorted once and for all, and why i won't allow myself to improve?
I feel my biggest problem at the moment, is not that I don’t have a goal, as I most certainly do, but that having a goal in itself is not enough. I need to plan how to get to that goal, I need to set out the steps I will take to get me there, otherwise as I read somewhere recently that without a plan it isn’t a goal at all, it is just a wish.
April 2012 and the London Marathon for that year is fast approaching and I am not yet off the starting blocks, so it will make a tough 26.2 miles, I know how tough, I have been there before and this time I wanted to be better than I was previously. Maybe I have a fear of not being better that causes me to hold back so I have an excuse when I do not achieve it. This of course would be much easier than putting in the hard work required to make me improve so that I can be better and fulfil my goal potential. The easy option then!!! So what is so difficult about achieving success?
Maybe it isn't really that difficult, maybe it is because I am unprepared and unplanned to achieve that it seems so difficult.
OK so maybe trying to think about 2012 is not helping, it is a while away and I am currently not fit to run at all let alone 26.2 miles, but I don’t need to run it now I need to run it in 16 months time. Plenty of time to implement a new plan with small steps to achieve along the way, but still there is definitely a plan required, and once that is in place, then I do actually need to work towards it in order to achieve it in the end.
So to inspire me further my first interim goal is now set to help focus me along the way, I have entered a half marathon at the end of May, which I need to be my starting focus for fitness. I need a plan NOW to bring it into focus and the longer I leave it, the more difficult it becomes.
I know I am not alone with this problem, and I know that others overcome the feelings of malaise, so I need to plan and then execute the plan with determination and in small chunks or steps. Fitness will not come by itself it does require some input to achieve, this is my first start point. In one of my favourite quotes at the moment
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle.
So today I am getting my required training habits down onto paper and making each step to fitness a goal in itself.
Give me those training habits again, and just watch me go.
