I was sitting in a team meeting on Tuesday engrossed in a discussion about diversity and culture and how it’s important to understand each and every individual and just how different we all are.

It was a late afternoon meeting and I kept checking my watch hoping the meeting would end early enough for me to get home and run. My mind wandered off and I secretly checked my Twitter timeline to see what everyone was up to.

As I scrolled through my list of Twunners (runners on Twitter), I saw the tweets about afternoon training sessions, updates on evening time trials and even some blogs posts about the Pirates 21km and Peninsula Marathon from the weekend.

It’s then that I made the link between the discussion focussing on diversity, and my thoughts about running. We’re all different. As individuals, as work colleagues and as runners.

I often make the mistake of comparing myself to other runners, particularly when it comes to my pace, the distances I run and even training methods. But I shouldn’t.

You see, just as in life, every individual is different and so too are runners.

Some are lightning fast, others are slow. Some like to incorporate training sessions at the gym, others like to do track work at athletic clubs. Some runners wake up to run at 4am, others prefer to run in the evenings.  

Some runners are able to run 21kms in under 1.5 hours, others do it in 3 hours.

The point is, we might all fall under the category of runners but we’re all so very different. I need to remind myself of that next time I compare my running with other runners (and walkers).

The focus should be on me. What’s my PB (personal best), what’s my PW (personal worst). How am I doing? Am I improving? Am I having fun? Am I reaching my goals? Because that’s what counts.