Patience: The Key To Success

Patience: The Key To Success

Being patient is something that is super important in this sport and unfortunately most runners learn about it the hard way. If we’re striving for success then we have to be patient with our progress. Most rewards are achieved with not only being consistent and working hard but by also learning to be patient. This cannot be said enough. So let’s break it down on why it’s important to be patient.

To get started a runner can’t race if they’re injured, or even race well, if they’re not training properly. And a main aspect of training properly is by being patient. Being patient is important because our sport requires long-term development that can take years of hard work. Being patient means creating long-term goals that are months or even years down the road. We as runners thrive on accomplishing goals and we tend to be impatient when striving for these goals. We want success now. This is where we get it wrong. Our bodies can’t race and train at our peak year round. Too many runners ignore where they currently are and instead think about where they want to be, so they train for where they want to be. But they’re not ready for that level of work yet and injury almost always happens. Each training session that we currently do is setting us up for the next training session. So we need to be patient and do today’s training session at an appropriate level so we can make the proper amount of progress without overdoing it. Also, when returning to running after a peak race it can be hard to resist the urge to jump right back into training. This is an area where runners struggle with the most. Their confidence is super high and all they want to do is jump right back into a heavy workload. But we can’t make that mistake. You must be patient.

We must maintain patience as we build throughout the training cycle and progress towards our reward. We need to make progress in the right direction. A good way to help with knowing the amount of progress being made is by using certain training sessions as checkpoints. These are a good way to know what your current fitness level is. These could be done as often as once per month. And I wouldn’t shy away from using smaller races as checkpoints as long as you know the purpose of the race. But remember that we don’t want to do these too often. We don’t want to overtrain. If you’re noticing progress in the wrong direction then you’ll need to reassess your training. You’ll need to make sure you’re giving the appropriate effort for each training session. Turning things back around now is much easier than doing it later so this requires you to be patient.

You’ve now been patient and can see the progress that has been made. You’ve done what you’re supposed to do. Now it’s time to put it all together on race day. But let’s not forget that patience is also important while racing. The biggest mistake that most runners make when racing is starting out too fast. Most runners are actually pretty surprised with how easy our goal pace feels when starting the race. Well, it should be easy. Your fitness is at its peak and we’ve eliminated the fatigue with the taper. But we need to keep our energy under control so we don’t fade late into the race. This requires being patient. As you can see, one of the biggest aspects of training and racing is being patient. If you’re wanting to succeed in this sport then you have to do the right things and trust the process. Be patient and you will be successful.