Yearly Archives: 2012

We’re all so different. Keep running.

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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.

Blue sees yellow

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I was quite surprised last year after completing one of those ‘colour profiles’ to discover that I am in fact a Blue person and not a Yellow person at all. Blue meaning I’m quite analytical (which I am) and Yellow meaning people’s person (which I really thought I was).

I guess I can’t be both and my Blue is much stronger than my Yellow, yet some days when I sit at my desk and chat to my fellow colleagues, I have to question the analysis. You see, I find that I really am a people’s person and I’m able to “see” what some of my colleagues around me can’t.

While my colleagues walk around the office with their serious faces on and in business mode, in my mind I am often wondering if they aren’t thousands of miles away…

If I look around me, I see:

An artist: She paints the most beautiful paintings. It’s a reflection of her heart and her strong values. She never speaks unkindly about anyone. Ever! But lately I see her face a picture of sadness. I know why and I feel helpless. As long as she knows I am there for her while she is trapped.

 

 

A teacher: I discovered the other day that she teaches Sunday School at her church. You don’t get a greater calling than to teach kids God’s Will. It makes sense now when I watch her at work. She’s a soft-spoken, gentle soul. I see how the stress sometimes gets to her and wears her down.

 

 

A good wife:  She upholds the highest standards both as a mother as well as a wife. Having made the decision not to have children, I somehow love listening to her stories. I also see when she shakes her finger at me when I moan about having family over or my grumpiness about household chores. The respect she shows for her husband, family and her role in the home is honourable.

 

A sunflower: She makes me love this country. She makes me love life. She makes me never want to talk about negative things, only good things. She is a bundle of energy and fun. She has also taught me about work – life balance and to pack up and leave the office in 5 minutes flat. She knows how to work hard and play harder!

 

Wait. I’m analysing aren’t I?  I guess I am Blue.

Running a simple fun run taught me lessons a half marathon never did

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A week ago, I ran the Pick ‘n Pay Fun Run out at Saheti School. I haven’t run many fun runs before as my focus has been on running the 10kms and half marathons. What I thought would be a quick, simple, unorganised race turned out to be so much more. Not only did I enjoy it more than I thought I would, but I’d like to share three things that stood out for me.

1. Nothing beats watching the sun rising whilst running through lush green suburbs on a fresh Sunday morning. It’s beautiful. I’ve never really taken time to stop and take in that warm sun as it falls on my face as I line up at the start of races. How blessed I am to experience it almost every weekend when we run a race. From now on, I’ll be making a special effort to stop and appreciate it.

2. A fun run is filled with the biggest mix of people I’ve ever encountered, all running towards a common finish. Grannies, children as young as 5, pregnant ladies, runners with dogs on leads, wheelchairs, prams, you name it, they’re there! Even a runner with one leg and on crutches. When people tell me they can’t run, I wish they could see what I saw. There are seriously no excuses in life.

3. I arrived at the start of that race with a charged Garmin, GU’s and butterflies in my stomach. After 10 minutes into the run, I felt kinda silly. The race is just that – fun! Yes, you can speed ahead and get a PB, or you can mill at the back and chat to your friends. It doesn’t matter. No one really bothers with what you’re doing, or your time or how you finish. There isn’t that competitive vibe you feel on the other races. Everyone gets on with their own race in their own time. This was a big learning for me and exactly what I needed to experience. I find I am way too obsessed with my time and everyone else in the half marathons. This was fun!

Sometimes the simplest things in life, like a silly fun run, can make you stop and appreciate the things around you that have actually always been there, but you’ve never really made time to notice before.

Dave: I’ll do it my way…

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My word, how small is this world!

Remember Dave? The pace setter who got me to that finish line of Two Oceans Half Marathon on 2010? He read my blog! In addition to some awesome comments, he sent me this story which he wrote and which was published in 2008 in Runners World.

Not only did it touch me but I’m sure you will find it inspirational too…

Thanks Dave!

I’ll do it my way…

I had a moment this week that explained everything to me. It’s funny how things happen –– suddenly, out on a training run, I find the answers to all my running questions. And all it took was a little hill and a bit of self-examination. Crazy stuff!

I found out last Thursday what it is all about, during a training run in the lovely Sani Hotel area on the KZN-Lesotho border, where I was staying ahead of the Sani Stagger Half Marathon I was due to run on Saturday. I headed out for my run to loosen the old legs up a bit and encountered a hill. Not a very tough hill, but one that pushed my heart-rate monitor up, and admittedly I slowed down to a walk, but when I reached the top I thought to myself, “Damn, Self, what are you doing?”

I immediately turned around, ran back down that hill, turned around and ran up it again. And when I got to the top without walking I felt like Rocky Balboa in the first Rocky film when he runs up the stairs of a monument and gets to the top, stops and jumps around with his arms in the air, celebrating like he’s just won the world title. OK, I didn’t quite jump around pumping my fists in the air, but I did shout “OH YEAH!”

It hit me then, that this is what it is about – your personal choices and goals, what you decide you want to achieve, and not what is expected of you. I just wanted to get up that hill without walking –– my time didn’t matter, and nobody else’s time mattered. It was just about me and my goal.

We place so many expectations on ourselves: Win this race, or our age category, or do a certain time on that race. Or beat this person, or the sub-whatever pacing bus, or just finish before the cut-off. Take this past weekend’s Sani Stagger, where I set myself a goal of beating my friend Sharon. Well, let’s not even go there –– because I ate her dust! But I sure talked a good race before the time!

I think sometimes we don’t realise the potential damage we do by professing our semi-wondrous abilities in running, because there are newbies (brand new runners) reading every word we write on running forums, or speaking to us at work, social functions, club runs and races. They then sometimes go out there with great expectations only to be sadly disappointed with the results.

For example, you read on the forum that this runner did such and such race in this time and it was a great race, but actually this guy is a double green Comrades runner (20 or more medals) who has a 4km time trial time of sub-16 minutes! The newbie arrives and tries to be like this runner, does the 4km in 36 minutes and never returns because he or she is totally embarrassed. I mean, how could they have done such a bad time? No ways can they hang out with these real runners.

But it’s not about what others can do or achieve regularly, seemingly so easily. If you’re a newbie runner, you are what you want to be, and you should not let others prescribe what you must do or achieve.

Similarly, we often get labelled according to our abilities and speed. I used to be a walker, and you know, things were quite simple then. You were a social walker or you were a race walker. But now what do I call myself? I am not a ‘‘runner,’’ in the grand scale of things, because I am not an ‘‘alien,’’ a person whose times are out of this world. But I am not ‘‘just a jogger,’’ either, so here I am stuck in this void between runner and jogger.

But now I realise that I don’t care what people call me, because I am a runner. I have my own goals and I will go after them in my own way, at my own speed, and on my terms. It doesn’t matter what others do, say or think, as long as I know I am doing my best.

For I am a runner.

(Dave’s blog: http://back2basicsqbh.wordpress.com/)