A Few Thoughts on Consistency in Running

There is no secret ingredient to success in running. There is no pill you can take or button you can push that will suddenly turn you into the next Mo Farah or Jim Walmsley. Good equipment helps, but no shoe will take you from a four-hour marathon to Boston overnight. So what separates successful runners from just-average runners who can’t seem to make any progress?

I used to be a pretty terrible runner. I would go days, sometimes weeks, without running and still expect to perform well. This had disastrous effects on my fitness, my times, and my morale. What changed? After a long period of struggling on and off with running I decided to change my approach. I shifted from looking at each day separately to looking at the week holistically. Instead of worrying too much about what one workout was going to be I focused on eliminating gaps in my training program. I went from running twice a week at 90 percent to running five times a week at 60 or 70 percent. I saw drastic improvements in my fitness. Over the course of several months my average 5-mile run time dropped seven minutes. My heartrate was lower across the board. Eventually I PR’d my marathon by almost an hour.

The importance of consistency in running has been on my mind the last few weeks as we begin a new year and people start trying (again) to make significant changes in their lives with various resolutions and plans for improvement. Unfortunately, in most cases, these commitments don’t last past January. What is the common thread among people who cancel their gym memberships or stop running after just a few weeks? More often than not, they struggle to remain consistent.

If you follow any elite or sub-elite runners on Strava they often differ drastically in the sorts of workouts they do and the distances and paces they run. But one constant among all of them is that they run consistently and rarely miss a day of training. I’ve often heard it expressed that if you aren’t improving then you’re backsliding. If you aren’t getting faster, you’re getting slower. While it isn’t exactly that simple, the general idea still applies to running. When you skip a day of training that isn’t a planned rest day you start to lose the progress you’ve already made. If this happens infrequently, you probably won’t notice an adverse effect on your fitness. If, however, these start to build up and suddenly you realize you haven’t run in a week, your next workout will be noticeably more difficult than the last time you ran.

The best way that I’ve found to combat struggles with consistency in running is to change my mindset with regard to perfection in workouts. One of the easiest excuses to skip a run is “it’s not ideal.” This can apply to the weather, the time, or nearly any other factor. The truth may be that it’s too rainy or cold outside to run your fastest 5k. There might not be enough time to run for an hour. It’s easy to look at these facts and decide just to wait until tomorrow. But while there may not be time to run for an hour, there might be time to run for twenty minutes. And a slower 5k workout is better than no workout.

At the end of the day, we have to be okay with modifying our workouts instead of canceling them. Most of us are not running at an elite level and our training plans are not so finely tuned that any adjustment to the program has drastic effects. More so, it is about changing our mindsets and overcoming the voice that tells us its okay not to run today. As Seth James DeMoor put it recently, all it takes sometimes is just turning the doorknob.

What are some ways you fight complacency in running? How do you remain consistent? If you struggle with consistency in running what are some ways that you can improve through modification or motivation?

Why I Run

It wasn’t until I contracted the coronavirus and couldn’t exercise for fourteen days that I realized how important running is to my daily life. For weeks I have tried to verbalize the connection I found in the last year to this sport but struggled to voice a tangible reason why I keep lacing my shoes up every day.  Running hurts, so why do we continue to do it? Why do we, the running community, put ourselves through grueling speed workouts and boring long runs on Saturday mornings when the payoff, a faster race time, is so often out of sight.

It turns out I don’t run solely to get faster, and I suspect you don’t either. It’s one of my goals. But if my only motivation was to beat my fastest times, I don’t think I would keep running for very long. Being sidetracked by the holidays and sidelined by Covid-19 is a tough blow to my current goal, a sub-3:30 marathon, and my long-term goal, qualifying for the Boston marathon. During the holidays I was still able to get workouts in, albeit in diminished volume. I anticipated this. When I tested positive for coronavirus, however, I was placed on a fourteen-day quarantine. This has meant fourteen days where I haven’t been allowed to run; I haven’t been allowed to partake in an activity which, for the last year, has been a brief hour of solace in an otherwise strange and confusing world.

In October I was blessed to have the opportunity to compete in the Little Apple Marathon in Manhattan, Kansas, which provided motivation to run nearly every day leading up to the race. But this wasn’t why I was able to sustain training in the heat and humidity of the summer. For starters, until I lined up at the starting line, I wasn’t sure if the event was even going to happen. Thankfully, my race wasn’t canceled, but hundreds of other races around the country were. The welcoming nature of the running community was what drew me into the sport initially, and throughout the pandemic it has been a key factor in keeping me motivated to improve and motivated to keep running. Like the members of many segments of society, runners took to the internet to vent about races being canceled and to share tips for improvement. I remember joining subreddits devoted to all things running and scouring YouTube to find devoted running vloggers, often delving into the comments sections to interact with fellow athletes. Spotify allowed me to engage with professionals in the sport through podcasts. Running provides me, and so many others like me, the opportunity to converse with a like-minded community and to offer encouragement and motivation when most needed.

Perhaps most importantly, though, running provides an opportunity to escape the mundane and free my mind during this uncertain time. Tempo runs allow me to focus solely on pace, heartrate, and the quality of my run. During longer runs I clear my mind and try to put into practice techniques I’ve been working on. There is something melodic and peaceful in getting out onto the pavement and just going hard. It is satisfying to look back on a good week of training and then look forward to the workouts next week. It’s something you don’t realize how much you love until it’s stripped away, even just briefly. I know that a few weeks without running won’t break me. But it’s helped me appreciate this sport, which I’ve chosen to make a part of my daily routine. I’m counting down the hours until my first post-Coronavirus run. Until then, I’ll sit back and appreciate what a gift running truly is.

What motivates you to lace up your shoes, get out the door and run? How has the pandemic affected your running? Leave a comment below to let us and others know why you run!

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