I'm on the verge of quitting trying to run faster! A Story of Failure. 😓

What age are you?

What are your PR’s?

You have a monster bass. Now you just need to cut the mileage down and half and start doing ever run faster. Do your workouts at mile pace. You have some great times ahead.

You don't even need to enter a "race" by the way. A "Matt London" would suffice.

Once you quit then that's it for life. You mise well keep going. You might as well keep going until you get it right.

Have you got the vaccine yet?

Fitness isn't a destination, it's a journey, and it happens in cycles. You have to learn to enjoy all phases of the cycle instead of greedily chasing the end product.

Do you really think planning your running around family vacations is difficult? Wait until you are introduced to real responsibility...

You probably need to take a few weeks off:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444032404578006274010745406

"Bernard Lagat ... will toss his sneakers in a closet and pig out for the next five weeks. No running. No sit-ups. No heavy lifting, except for a fork."

tl;dr

Being “sick of it” is a zero sum game.

Just run the all-comers meets every week when they start up and let the good races come to you don't force it or get all worked up.

That's how i feel as well, unfortunately.

A few years ago, I got free comp entries to quite a few smaller races and i ran a lot of them because, why not? No pressure, no psyche, no big deal. And the takeaway - i ended up racing the best of my life. Just because i didn't stress and I did it, which led to improvement.

Then they changed the comp race entry rules and i couldn't qualify for any anymore. I stopped racing and my times went downhill steadily.

I guess the takeaway is, if you can relax and just do it, you will get better. Otherwise, you probably won't.

Honestly, I feel you. I knew my pr's but not the year. I didn't realize they were from 2017...

I hear you, Jamin. I set a goal of running my first marathon this year with the hopes of getting into decent shape and running low 2:30s. I ran 29:3x for 10,000m in college, so this seemed very reasonable. However, for some reason, I'm just not getting faster, my body is not responding, I'm sore every day even if I only run easy 4 days in a row. I'm only running 7 miles per day, half of what I did when I was at my best in college, and my body is just giving me a big FU. It sucks. I don't know what is going on, and honestly, I question if it's worth it. Might give up the goal and reduce my mileage to just 3-5 miles per day and start lifting more again. Idk.

2600 bro wrote:

Have you got the vaccine yet?

Go out, meet someone, and attempt a casual conversation.

Jamin you have no real responsibilities unless you have a wife or kids we are don't know about.

I'm guessing you're also getting older. It happens man. Right before I got married I realized I just wasn't able, capable, or willing to continue to put in the same training and getting less results. Hindsight being what it is I should have really pushed the volume envelope and see how long I could hold 140mi weeks, but life goes on.

There is life after competitive running. There is even competition after competitive running.

Today I ran a 12:58 2 mile at the end of an Army Combat Fitness Test and beat second by 30sec. Small victories man.

Alan

I understand the failure-of-not-reaching-goals feeling. The intention for a goal is to build up and perform towards it. We think having a high goal is much better than no goal or a lower goal. But the intention is not that not meeting the goal is failure. At race day there is nothing more to be done than perform as well as possible. You have done your efforts in preparing and now you get what you can dig out and I guess one should shift focus to how well you are able to perform given the resources that day and not what your dreams were. Of course not reaching goals is no fun, but.

I am afraid of failure so much that I rather chicken out and let failure happen. How stupid is that? What if I can be happy with my best effort and just accept the result? Positive offensive rather than negative defensive. It might be that when performing with a positive mindset, the performance is closer to max (not just might, I believe it will happen)

Henrik Ingebrigtsen is really good at digging out impressive performances when he is NOT in shape. How do he do that? He explains it is a process he goes through the days before and at race day and he gets into a mentality he will PERFORM as well as possible. One can admire that ability and try to copy it as much as possible. As he says, it is easy to perform well when everything is positive, but when things are not perfect, most people fail much more than needed...

Sham 69 wrote:You have a monster bass.

Pound for pound, the best fighting fish around. :-)

Maybe when the border opens up you can go visit Greg and get in some good training in Edmonton. You might just need a new stimulus.

Bad Wigins wrote:

2600 bro wrote:

Have you got the vaccine yet?

Go out, meet someone, and attempt a casual conversation.

+1

and speaking of bass... wrote:

Sham 69 wrote:You have a monster bass.

Pound for pound, the best fighting fish around. :-)

xD