Most of the time my resistance in runs come from required hill training and sprint work outs. The benefits of which are incredible. Building resistance, endurance, and being able to handle stress are critical for my longer runs. Essential for the win I had above that not only had hills to overcome, but hypothermia and rain for 23 miles of the 26.2 I ran.
Resilience requires creativity and flexibility: the creativity to explore multiple viewpoints and the flexibility to embrace a positive but realistic assessment — or reassessment — of a challenging situation.
There was a half marathon in Lexington, KY I ran last year (Run the Bluegrass if your curious enough to look it up) that had no less than 33 hills to tackle. Some small, some long and with steady inclines. It’s in spring, so you have to consider cooler temperatures too.
My challenge wasn’t to train for the perfect number of hills to overcome or even the steepest one. The goal was to train my brain to understand and be self-aware. Self-aware enough to be ready for any type of hill as well as be ready to tackle numbers of various ones for long periods of time. To understood when my body was pushing to hard and when it wasn’t.
To date, this training has helped me achieve PRs and win several placements in races I’ve had over the years. Run the Bluegrass was my second fastest 13.1 to date, but also physically harder than most other flat courses. It’s taught me the value of being realistic with my assessment of what is in front of me and not just naïve or hopeful that I got it all figured out.
The GTTW (Going to the Well) learn here is this can work not just for our physical aspirations by working on resilience creatively, but our work and life goals as well. Any mental game you have in front of you, you have to have a plan of building in resistance and awareness work to achieve the best outcome. This gives you the added advantage of knowing how much energy or work required it will take. It can eliminate costly surprises altogether.
Anything worth going after requires a certain amount of future thinking. Building a training plan that will build resistance/resilience to help you be more self-aware is a key in that future thinking. Staging out where you should be as you progress through the stages to get to the finish before you begin has incredible value to your success.
Everyone has heard this in their careers at least once:
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Going out fast with that work will burn you out as a leader, burn out your team because they’ll follow your lead, and you will have disappointment or regret when you burn out before you can finish.
Take time to explore the full extent and story of what you want, what it take to achieve it, and what level of awareness you’re going to need to make it all the way. Instead of costly negative learn and burn, you can build in a positive one by experimenting through what it will take to reach your goals along the way.
Thanks for reading! Hope Sunday has been relaxing and a great time to just reflect or spend time with family/friends.
✌ Shawn
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