If i had to choose a war-cry for the current times, i don’t think there could be a better one than
“Hang In There”.
There have been countless times when i have said/recieved this to/from folks in the last 12-15 months. I'll take you through 2 recent runs of mine , that just nailed the concept and the need to stick to it.
Run #1
It was March , Himachal and I were dragging ourselves out of the bone chilling winters. Winters had taken a toll on my running and the weekly mileage for last 3 months was down from 50-60kms/ week to 20-30kms/week.
Pre hibernation i was easily doing a half marathon(21 kms) in ~1:55 hrs ,
so for this Post hibernation run, i gave myself extra 4-5 mins and thought of doing the 21kms in 1:59:59 hrs, popularly called a “sub-2-half”.
For a 1:59:59 half marathon, I had to keep an avg pace of 5:41 mins/km. I started off well and I was feeling good about the rhythm. I decided not to check my speed after every km but to do it at the 10th km. At 10th km, I gave a quick glance and found my avg pace @ 5:43/km already.
This was a bummer. As the second half is usually slower than the first half for me, there was no way this run was going to be a sub-2 half. I don’t know what happened in those 15-20 seconds, I lost all interest in completing the run and stopped right THERE and THEN.
At this moment I was 10km away from house and 11kms short of my target.
I took lift from a biker and got back home. The usual post run high was missing.
Run #2
2 Weeks later, I again attempted the “sub-2-half” but with a slight tweak to my mental model.
“I am going to HANG-IN-THERE for 1hr 59 mins 59 secs”.
I started off with a similar rhythm as I did the other day. At 10th km, I was clocking an avg of 5:40/km, which was just slightly better than the last time but still a sub-2-half looked improbable today as well. Staying true to the commitment, I kept going.
I’ll skip the details of what happened between 10th and 21st km but I almost did stick out the complete1hr 59mins 59 secs.
If you are thinking, I got some second wind and completed the 21kms in sub-2 hours, that never happened, infact i didn't even complete the full distance.
I clocked an avg of 5:52/km instead of the targeted 5:41/km.
What fascinated me a great deal about this run was that I ended up with a distance of 20.43 kms in my target time, which was JUST ~700mtrs short of my original target.
I was amazed to see how a small tweak to my mental model left me with astoundignly different result/emotions in similar situation.
I don’t know what your race is , I don't know how much time you have given yourself to achieve that. Whatever you do, don’t quit if the initial milestones don’t look promising,
Please please please “HANG IN THERE” for the whole duration.
Trust me the finish line looks way more achievable from 700mtrs then it does from 11 kms. :)
