Like the rest of the free world, one of my new year’s resolutions was to focus on my health. This meant finding sustainable ways to be consistently active, and make better eating choices. Luckily (or unluckily) for myself, I had halfwittedly signed up for three half-marathons this year with my running friend, Lauren. Never really having been a consistent runner before, I began to train, mostly out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to finish the first one without needing to call in sick the next day. Now that January is over, here is what I’ve learned so far.
- Setting multiple attainable, yet evolving, milestone goals is key. My monthly goal is to run more miles every month than there are days. This month, I’ve run a total of 49.5 miles within the 31 days of January. This doesn’t include the 15+ hours of ping pong and three hours of tennis that fueled my month. Before every run, I set a goal of how many miles I would run that day and stuck to it with diehard determination. My goal for the month was to work my way up to a ten mile run, which I was able to do by the last Sunday of January.
- Not giving leeway to yourself is crucial for building mental discipline. On my first day of running, I ran as long as I could without stopping. Six miles. However, six miles was the hope/goal I had set for myself prior to this run. It was incredibly difficult during the run to find motivations to keep going (I mean, what’s stopping me from stopping?), except to force myself to think that I had no option but to keep going. No options, no leeway, no excuses. If you don’t have a solid motivation to keep going, give yourself a specific and inflexible boundary to not stop.
- Find external factors that can help you stick to your goals. For runs where I didn’t allow myself to stop, I chose areas where there was a large continuous path with no crosswalks or breaks in the path. For longer runs, I would park on the edge of my starting point and run in one direction for half of my goal miles, so that I would have no option but to do the same distance back. These gave me less of a reason to not meet my goals.
- Find what makes it fun or interesting or worthwhile to you and honor that. Running is not my jam — at least it wasn’t in the beginning (surprisingly, I’ve grown to enjoy it). But I found that what makes me not dread running is where I choose to run. The Long Beach beach path is my favorite place to be, so I run there often. My second favorite place to run is Cerritos Regional Park, which is huge and gorgeous, and located right across the street from where I play ping pong (my true passion).
- Making the time is the hardest part — you have to plan. As someone who likes to live life without a fixed schedule, I realized quickly that this wouldn’t work when it came to training for the half. This is definitely more difficult in the winter, when sunlight is limited and you’re stuck in the office 8+ hours a day. So… I planned. I determined at the beginning of each week which days and hours I’ll run and for how many miles. I made social plans around those running hours. I woke up early on the weekends. I even made a progress calendar.
Mainly, running has taught me to honor and respect the goals and plans I made with myself as much as I would with those I made with friends. No flaking, no excuses, and being present and consistent.
As for next month? A lesson for February may be learning how to run with other people. I didn’t run with others while training because although I knew people who wanted to run, I didn’t know anyone who wanted to run as many miles as I did. Hopefully I’ll have more insights on this soon.
Wish me luck at this Sunday’s Surf City Half Marathon!
