Why am I listening to this excoriating podcast with a host who sounds as if she just came off a bender and a coach doing his best to answer questions sensibly but not getting any sensible questions to answer? Perhaps it’s because I am out running, and I don’t want to interrupt my flow to change the podcast. There are two parts to this story; the first is that I am following a Garmin training plan, the second that both coaches keep repeating that inane and insufferable “truism” that you have to love every minute of your training and no coach should ever ask you to do things you don’t like.
If you have a coach, which seems frightfully common these days even though most of us are mediocre, any coach that is always trying to find exercises or training that you’ll do because you love it should be sacked. If you love doing something, chances are, you’ve maxed out on that particular thing and need to bring up your weaknesses rather than reinforcing your strengths. I’m not sure when society decided that people who were training (or in fact any person at all) should never have to do anything they do not like. Clearly, however, no-one succeeds with this philosophy. If you are going to do anything worthwhile, you’ll have to do many things that you don’t like, and the idea that an endurance athlete, who is going to have lots and lots and lots of low points during long races will love everything they do is an endurance athlete unprepared to actually perform. You are what you do and the more you do things you dislike the better you get at not merely tolerating life but winning at life.
I got the idea of using a Garmin training program from my brother who has been dabbling with becoming a runner and has been using Garmin training programs to prepare for events. Generally, I programme my own training which is always difficult because I have so many sports I regularly participate in, and, I’m trying to maintain life as a functional human. Somewhat randomly, I selected a half marathon heart rate based training programme for beginners. This training programme is 16 weeks long and is a little strange but not weird or wacky enough for me to abandon it. In fact, I like that this aspect of training is a plug and go. Three days a week I do some kind of run training and all I have to do is follow the instructions. Perfect. Today was a 40 minute run at Zone 3. According to my Garmin statistics, I spent 30 of those 40 minutes in zone 4 or 5 which is clearly nonsense as I was quite comfortable the whole time. Either my heart rate zones are calculated wrong (I have literally no idea what the algorithm is) or my watch is wrong, or both.
None of this really matters, what matters is showing up consistently and training consistently and doing things you don’t like consistently because at some point in life you will have to get through something difficult that you don’t like and you need to be tough enough to persevere.
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