Keeping the Eyes on the Prize

I know I’ve talked a lot about long term vision for running success on here lately, but I can’t help it, I think it is one of the most important skills a runner can cultivate and deeply impacts running performance.

If you are like me, you like to do this quickly. See results fast. Get quick wins. Achieve that fitness level overnight. And often times, this character trait can be good – it pushes us into action, right away. If you are like me, you are doers, someone who jumps into not just one thing, but multiple things without too much hesitation or thought. And you probably thrive off seeing wins, results, awards, accolades, and success. And I get that, I am that person too. I LOVE seeing tangible results, I love feeling my body getting faster and seeing my watch hover around (what I see as) a fast pace. I love jumping to heavy training or opportunities or creating momentum. But, what I am weak in (and what you might be if you are like me) is the vision to keep going, even when it gets tough.

Landon and I talk about this all the time, he is the analyzer, the one who is slow to do things, but once he does jump in and go for it – he does it with his whole heart and rarely, if ever, quits.

I, on the other hand, am eager to do lots of things. I love to jump into new experiences, new adventures, and challenges, but when it doesn’t seem to ‘happen,’ as quickly as I want it or adversity comes my why, the adventure starts to lose it luster and I, sometimes fade away from said challenge.

This doesn’t play out exactly like this, all the time and with every situation, but I’ realizing, as I continue to get to know myself more and educate myself on mindset/running/and life I am realizing that this flaw in my character is defintely something that can hold me back in life if I am not able to do some painful, self – reflection and challenge myself to break out of old habits and fight to overcome old habits.

I am realizing that sometimes I expect running (let’s use that for an example because that is what I am talking about anyways – but apply this wherever you want) to be easy. I think/expect that it will just come to me, like my age group wins came to me when I first started running. I think, deep down, sometimes I just expect running success and fitness and achieving a high level in running preformance to just drop in my lap and hello, I am learning that duh, that is NOT going to happen.

And I think, down in my heart of hearts, I do know that, like anything in life, if you want it – you need to work for it, hard. And a lot of time that means sacrifices. But, I just don’t want to somewhat know this, deep down, somewhere, buried within me. I want to thrive off the challenge of success. I want to not only accept, but love the uphill climb that progress is. I want to not only tolerate, but enjoy the hard work that is to come, knowing that it WILL lead to something great.

I know that even in the every day, there is a choice to make. A choice to decide how to react, how to think, and how to act throughout the day and the choices that happen. So, instead of waiting for running success to fall into my lap, I want to keep choosing to make it happen. To keep showing up, even when I don’t feel like it or don’t see immediate results. The results may not show up for a week or two or three or five, but step by step, moment by moment, week by week, there will be a difference. I hope to be able to look back a year from now and see how far I’ve come, because I expected it to be hard and din’t let it scare me away.

Because, running, for me, is too big of a dream for me to give up on.