You Are Not a Before and After Picture (And Neither Is Your Running)
You know what I mean though right? Those hundreds of images that pop up over on Insta — the cinch point selling you the latest miracle, soul-crushing diet.
Look at Barry now, ripped to shit. And look how Barry, once a fat lad from Croydon, used to look when he was fairly happy eating a Crunchie*, long before he decided he should probably try and get in shape.
Oh Barry the chances are, my friend, you’re going to wind up back at square one in under a year when you can no longer stomach those just-add-water, devoid of joy sachets, that have uncovered an ab or two.
Because YOU are not a before and after pic. Not in your life, your relationships, your work or your running.
Believing that you are, simply sets yourself up for a lifetime of never achieving anything more than maintaining the status quo. If there’s one thing runners are hopeless at, it’s standing still.
Let’s Do The Timewarp Again
Here’s a practical way of looking at it. Dig out a photo of yourself from 10 years ago. Do you know what’s different about you? It might be your life circumstances, a new haircut, or even a profound loss but it’s certainly not the fact that somehow in that intervening decade you’ve reached the pinnacle of your existence. And the same is going to be true 10 years from now.
You’ll be running countless more races, failing to complete a ton of tough training runs that just didn’t pan out, and setting goals you’ll feel proud of yourself for achieving. And will you stop there? Proud in the knowledge that you’ve won in life, beaten that dreadful past version of yourself, and having achieved mental, physical, and spiritual perfection.
Of course, you won’t. And how you know that is because of running, because running turns conventional wisdom (or at least the wisdom of the diet and lifestyle influencers) on its head.
Running Wild
If you’ve been a runner for a while, how were those 5k times from 20 years ago, before that injury, change in hormones, kids, stressful job, etc., kicked in? Maybe better, probably better. You weren’t bad, were you? In fact, you were probably pretty good, good for you.
But how do you feel about running now?
I’ve never been fast so my 5k times don’t vary a lot but my attitude to running does and has changed over the intervening years. From a place of: “I need this to survive” to “this is a joy,” the ratio between time and enjoyment can alter from year to year, life experience to life experience.
From a few months of casual trails in the hills to target setting, thigh-busting fartlek runs and speedy strides down the seafront — there is no before and after picture in running because there can be no before and after picture in running.
And that’s because we don’t all use the same metrics for success. Speed? Yes, sometimes but improvement in health and an uptick in enjoyment, aren’t they much more fun and more meaningful?
And guess what? That’s something to celebrate. Our progress is a journey. A very weird, not very straight and frequently exasperating journey, but a journey nevertheless.
And in the words of the Nike Global Head Running Coach, this is about running…and it’s not about running.
*One Crunchie was consumed in the writing of this article. I regret nothing.
