COACH’S CORNER – COMPARISON IS THE DEATH OF JOY

COMPARISON IS THE DEATH OF JOY

It’s happened to us all at some point, that shiny new personal best time or longest ever weekly mileage suddenly pales in comparison when you check out what others are posting on social media.

Your brain just naturally seeks to compare your performance against others in order to create a reference point, but it pays to keep in mind that we all have different factors which affect our running.

Work and family commitments, biomechanics and age all come together to ensure we are on a unique and individual journey. Taking these other factors into consideration, ask yourself if you are really doing yourself a favour by comparing your results to someone who could be at a different stage in life.

Running is a demanding sport on the body and mind, the effort required from each individual whether they are at the front or back of the pack is universal regardless of pace or distance.

It is completely normal to want to compete and see improvements from your training, but it is also vitally important to keep a healthy prospective of why you run and to avoid constantly comparing yourself to others.

Instead of rating your progress by what others are achieving, how about zoning back inwards, try tracking your sessions and improvements (pace, strength, endurance, mental health, etc) in a training diary as a way to reflect on your progress and honestly look at your social media feed. Is it making you feel happy or inferior?

Think back to what got you into running in the first place.

Are you staying true to that joy or have you got caught up with what others are doing? We have one life to live, so why not just seek to be better than we were yesterday if anything?