I'm sitting on the couch and waffling back and forth between all the different things I did this weekend - trying to decide which, if any, are blog-worthy.
I started thinking about the endurance swim we did on Friday morning, our curling game on Friday evening and my long run on Saturday morning.
I started comparing them, trying to remember if anything out of the ordinary happened.
It got me thinking - about how I look at different activities differently.
When I think about a curling game, I think about a particular shot (be it amazing or agonizingly bad). I think about how we swept a rock beautifully into position. I don't think about the final score because I care less about winning than I do about playing well. We're a fairly new team so I don't go in trying to win - I go in trying to be better than I was last week. So the game gets broken down shot by shot in my head as I try to figure out how to improve.
Imagine if I broke a run up like that? If I talked about how well kilometre 6 went compared to kilometre 8. If I compared kilometre 6 from Saturday's 18k run to the same kilometre the weekend before. That just seems so bizarre to me to break runs down that way.
I look at a run as one activity. I look at my final time and my average pace. I look at my pre-run compared to my post-run blood sugar. I compare those things week to week but I don't compare the tiny details. Maybe I should??
I approach swimming somewhere between curling and running. I like to calculate how far I've swum during a workout but I don't keep track of it the way I do my running. Probably because I swim farther during even the easiest workout than I will ever swim during a triathlon so I'm not worried about building up my distance.
I may have to rethink that if I ever lose my mind and sign up for an Ironman.
I also break down my strokes, my 50m sprints and my stretch cord sessions trying to find out how to get better. The same way I do for curling. I'm getting better in the pool but there is still a pretty lengthly laundry list of things to work on.
So basically, I'm just trying to get better...at everything.
I have mastered the art of Sunday afternoon couch sitting however. May even be a gold medal contender.
I am trying to be more mindful when I run. While I don't pick apart every run when I'm done--because, let's face it, most of them are pretty easy and over courses that I've run lots of times--I do spend a fair bit of time during each run thinking about my form, posture, pace, exertion, drinking, eating, etc. On long runs, I think about how far I am and what I would be doing in a race at this point. After a race or track workout, I'm definitely looking at all of my splits and reflecting on what happened.
ReplyDeleteSwimming (much like skiing or curling or whatnot) requires lots of mindfulness in the moment to do it right, so I think it's natural to wait until afterward to pick it apart, think about all of the different kinds of drills, and figure out what worked well and what didn't. I'm glad that running and cycling are pretty easy in comparison.
Keep having fun!