The running philosophy!

It is anyone's guess why most of my profound babbling's tangent off of one activity!

Yesterday I ran 14miles ... nothing great about it. Infact it was between bad and average! The week leading upto the run was miserable... I fell sick after eating out! I figured running is just like life. There are good days and bad days. And then some promising days that turn out to be not-so-good, just like yesterday!!

When you run 14 miles you have a lot of time to ponder over such things. So I did...........

I had 1 bad long run in the recent past (2 weeks earlier), the 20 miler and then this current predicament. But the 16 mile run a week before was great, arguably the best run I've had to date. For the 20 miler 2 weeks earlier, I ran with someone much faster than I was and ended up with a hamstring pull and had to limp to the finish 20 minutes short of my goal time. This one, I was running with someone slower than me. Still not feeling so good.

But why was the 16 miler so great? I ran alone with a group of 70-80 runners! That was the key! Running alone in a group! I paced myself according to my needs, goals, pains and strengths. I drew just enough inspiration from the others around me but didn't let the competition dictate the terms of my run.

That's it! You have to try and improve with reference to your previous performance, not based on some Mr.X. You can still draw inspiration from someone in a better place than you and reevaluate your goals from time to time!

Is this applicable to life? If it does it makes things so much more simpler. And you can still relish every step you take in difficult times. I'm going to try this philosophy in the coming days and try to do things better today than what I did yesterday. It's not like Einstien just discovered e = mc2 right? All of us must have thought of such "brilliant" things before! However this might just be what the doctor recommended. I think, I just rediscovered a pragmatic solution to my everyday rubik's cube.

And then the water stop interruped my thought.

-Vijayasarathy-