Although I’ve been running regularly for the best part of 16 months now, I hit a point this month where it was really hard to get motivated and go running. A couple of factors influenced this state of mind, including a lack of sleep that consequently left me feeling too tired to run first thing in the morning (my preferred time to run), but also perhaps because I increased my mileage by 36% between December 2007 (69.69 miles) and January 2008 (95.47 miles) in an attempt to win a Nike+ challenge. As experts will attest to, the 36% increase in miles is too much of an increase within one month. The strange thing however, is that it wasn’t physical fatigue I felt this month, but more psychological fatigue. Why do I suddenly not want to go running? Why does the mere thought of running not interest me at the moment? Questions such as these have been running through my head and keeping me lying in bed first thing in the morning instead of embracing the dawn sunrise and getting out there to run.

I sought guidance in a book that many runners think upon as the Holy Grail of running, Galloway’s Book on Running by US Olympic athlete Jeff Galloway. While flicking through this book to try to find out why I had hit a period of slump, I came across a chapter called ‘The Five Stages of a Runner’ which describes the different type of runners we all are. As clear as a bright moon in the dark nighttime sky, the following words stood out to me and resonated in my ears:

“Once the competitive spirit has taken over, you tend to lose sight of your limitations, and mistake fatigue for loss of motivation. Finally, you push too far and break down with injury, sickness or fatigue, and you either can’t or don’t want to run.”
Jeff Galloway, Galloway’s Book on Running.

I was classified as a “Competitor.” This is a runner that concentrates too much on competition and puts too much onus on wanting to run personal best times each and every time I run. This is a very naive approach to running, but a trap I had obviously fell into. Could this highlight a danger in the fundamental philosophy of Nike+ challenges in that novice runners like myself are being tricked into thinking that winning and competition is what makes a good runner?

I was equating competition and success in Nike+ challenges and winning age-group trophies in local races as a sign that I was developing well as a runner. In actuality, by focusing on the shallowness of competition, my overall training quality and development was suffering. Just because I was focusing on one day’s competition, it made me lose sight of the bigger picture. Running, if you’re in it for the the long term, is based on growth and development over a far longer period of time. What it does not consist of is a flurry of intense activity just because there’s a race coming up at the weekend or the fact that a Nike+ challenge is about to end.

The experience of ‘the slump’ this month and the realization that I had become dazzled and wrongly influenced too much by competition, has made me a better runner already. I have now come to appreciate that my goals are not to win races, but to run and train effectively. Winning races may or may not happen in the future, but winning competitions should now be a result of effective running and development, and not a direct motivation of why I want to run.

My last two runs this week have been run at a slower than normal pace. I’ve even included some walking in both sessions. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of those two runs.

It’s good to be back.