Thanks to a martial arts injury as a teenager, I spent decades with tendinitis in my knees and an inability to do anything high impact with them. No matter how much I rested, stretched or did something worthwhile, they always gave out.
The more I read about the permanency of knee injuries, the more I resigned myself to thinking there was nothing I could do aside from low impact activities such as biking or yoga. Swimming seemed to be the only thing that I could feasibly do beyond that.
By the time I hit 40, it got to the point where I dreaded stairs. The pains were sporadic up until that point, but came with more consistenty the closer I crept to that “middle age.” Then, a few years ago, a friend of mine challenged me to do a virtual exercise challenge.
He had gotten into running as a way of staying healthy and losing weight, and wanted to take on something that we could do together. The challenge was to virtually walk/run the same distance as The Camino di Santiago, keep track of our distances and add it to the total. I told him in support I’d help him, but I’d have to walk.
Then something happened.
The effort to walk was feeling better on the knees each day I did it. The walking turned into periodic moments of jogging, then full on running. The one exercise that was supposed to damage me further was giving me new life.
Then I started setting my goals higher.
• Run a full 5k
• Run that 5k in half an hour
• Break the thirty minute barrier
• Run outside
• Complete a 5k race
This eventually led to outdoor runs where the kilometres kept going up and the feeling of it all just got better. That 5km led to 10km and is now leading to 22km.
However, I fell into a trap that many people do once they take on a new initaitve that was just for themselves:
I started researching metrics and comparing myself to others. Specifically, other runners who have been training for many years, if not most of their lives.
That moment hit me when I was finishing up a run and ran into my neighbour. He asked what distance I went that day.
Me, feeling slightly sheepish about my amateur number, said “Only 5k.”
He laughed.
“Only 5k,” he mocked. “I have asthma. I wish I could run more than a kilometre without it being an issue.”
To further solidfy the point, when I was gearing up for 10k run, I allayed my concerns to a friend about my pacing and finishing time. He asked if I knew what the world average was for finishing a run of that length.
“Before you think too long about it, the answer is zero because most of the world can’t run that long. You should be proud for just finishing it.”
Pardon the long garden path to get to my point, but the further entrenched we become in whatever it is we’re doing, the more we can lose sight of all we’ve done. There is no shame in telling people your goal is to “just finish” a run in the same way there shouldn’t be shame in “just finishing” any other project.
When you compare metrics against yourself, it should be a proud moment. In this case, I’ve been accomplishing something I have never been able to physically do and have been incredibly supported by my friends and family along the way. It’s not fair to compare myself against elite, sponsored athletes who spend all their time in training.
As that same friend who called me out also likes to say, “I’d rather be the world’s worst runner than its best couch potato.”
It’s easy to get sucked into a small bubble and think that’s indicative of how the entire world thinks and judges. Most people simply don’t care.
However, if you do have that competitive edge to you, then cooperate with others and compete against yourself.