The importance of slowing down
In running. Life. And everything in between. OK maybe not everything, but if we take running for now, we can adapt it to life as well.
The past few weeks friends and colleagues have been asking me all the questions anybody not a serial runner is meant to be asking. How far you've ran, how fast you've ran, how is your knees and how much weight have you lost. A lot of hows. When I was not a runner, I was asking the same of questions, adding insult to it by telling them running is for people that have never tried any real sport and if they were really active they would be hitting the gym or devoting themselves to a martial art. I did that (insulting and martial arts) and it was great (martial arts), for sometime. I learned a lot about the importance of breathing and stretching and what our muscles are capable of doing under stress. But I never really got to understand the importance of slowing down.
When you're training for the Marathon you spend 16 weeks building up the stamina, adding the hours and miles on your running feet, increasing the amount of oxygen you take on every breath and fighting the urge to stop. Among other things. Every fourth week, you are meant to drop the weekly miles and intensity of your runs, to avoid injuries and exhaustion. Like life itself, there are times when you have to work hard for a period of time and then slow down (or even take a complete break) straight after that. In the case of your Sunday long runs, you slow down and speed up mid-run. That's the only time your allow your body to take over the mind and the only way you can survive the pounding on the concrete.
The rest of the time you remember that you're not bigger than the Marathon you're running and let your muscles know who is the boss. Of course you can blast through 26+ miles (or 40 years of your working life), without slowing down, but the chances of failing are considerably higher than finishing. Even if you succeed, you will most likely not have fun in the process. And what's the point of spending 4 hours on your running feet (or 40 years in meetings, planes and the inter webs), if you look back at the end and say "where was all this time gone and why I feel like that?"