I forgot to plug my phone in last night and it died this morning at the exact moment I was getting ready to head out the door for a 4-miler. It wouldn’t be a problem if I was supposed to do 4.5 miles or even 3.5 as I have established loops for both those distances from my house. But for whatever reason, I don’t have a set 4-mile route leaving from my house (add that to the list of things I need to do this lifetime). Not having my headphones with me was a bit of a rub, but I run fairly often without them anyway, so it didn’t irritate me nearly as much as not having my trusty GPS to tell me how far I was going, what my pace was, etc. For almost the first mile, I was mapping streets out in my head, guessing at approximate distances and planning out how I could get as close to an exact 4 miles as possible. Suddenly, it hit me. What did it matter if I ran 3.8 or 3.9 miles instead of 4? Did the exact distance really matter? Had I become so obsessed with getting it right every time and making sure I was hitting the mileage number that I would actually feel a weight of guilt if I was off by a couple tenths of mile? Diagnosis? Runner’s guilt. Here’s the thing. Some people run purely for fitness… others purely for love of running… lots of us somewhere in between. But whatever the reason, we’ve all been caught in the guilt trap a time or two. Part of what we love about running is the sense of achievement it gives us, but the ugly flip side of that achievement is the perceived sense of failure we get when we fall short of our goals for ourselves. And some of us fall prey to the idea that, if we heap enough guilt on ourselves, somehow we’ll be motivated to enough to hit those goals again. But the odd thing about guilt is that it usually does the opposite. Instead of driving us toward our goals, it pulls us away. Little by little, guilt wears away at all the positive thoughts and emotions that surround something we love to do and replaces them with feelings of regret, failure and overwhelming pressure. Nobody likes feeling like they HAVE to do something. But that’s exactly what guilt does. It says, “you HAVE to do this, or you’re a failure.” So, how do we escape the guilt trap? #1: We stop listening! When guilt says, “You HAVE to do this”, we remind ourselves that, no, we actually don’t have to do it! The world will not end, we will not be failures, we will not be un-loveable, we will not be losers. We are runners, but that’s not all we are. Running is a part of me, but it’s not the whole. I’m not valuable because I run. I run because I’m valuable and it’s something I love to do. #2: We replace guilt with love. I hate guilt because it makes me forget how much I love running! Yes, running is about distances and mileage and pace and goals and achievement, but it can’t just be about that, or inevitably guilt will creep in and derail you! It has to be about love too, or the pressure we put on ourselves will get to be too much. #3: We unplug! Thank God my phone died this morning! Sometimes we need to unplug from all the stats and measurements and data and just run. When was the last time you grabbed your shoes and headed out the door without even knowing how far or how fast you were going? It’s been too long for me! Technology is great, but there’s just something about the open road, your own two feet and no agenda! Time to say “goodbye”! In summary, it’s time to say “goodbye” to Runner’s Guilt. It’s very possible I’m the only one that struggles with this, but I would guess there’s a few of you that can relate. Can we agree to stop listening to the guilt and start feeling the love? I’m not sure how far I ran this morning. I’m not sure what my average pace was, or my split times, or how far I was above sea level… or anything like that. But I ran. And, at the end of the day, maybe that’s good enough!
