BLOG 4
9:05pm, Tuesday 24th September 2024
accountability
noun [ U ]
the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens:
Returning from a 10-mile run yesterday, I had one if those moments where I was taken aback by the fact, I couldn’t really recall anything about the run. I was out running across the city for close to 90 minutes and yet had no real memories of what had happened. I’ve had this feeling after runs before. Where your mind goes to a state of nothingness. You become clear of thought and enter a flow state where the roads that are so familiar, they just pass on by. Murakami talks about this state of void in his book ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’. It’s a nice place to be, almost like autopilot. The speed of the run is easy, your fitness is good enough that you’re not extending yourself and the worries and stresses of the world are not in view.
Sunday’s run was different. I haven’t chosen to run with a buggy that often but as our homelife becomes increasingly busy (see previous blog) I now occasionally roll it out with our 4th child Florence. I’m not entirely sure our buggy is designed for running, it certainly didn’t feel that way over the first few miles on Sunday. Florence slept soundly as I struggled along the Blackrock loop, walking the footbridge across the link and turning at 3.5 miles to return to our starting point at the Castle. Florence woke for the last few minutes and seemed rather amused at the effort her dad was putting in to run 9-minute miles!!
Saturday, I stuck in the earbuds and took in a nice easy 6-mile loop around the city. I was listening to the High-Performance podcast and an interview with Michael Johnson. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been writing articles on some of the greatest track and field stars and the next one I’ve planned is on Michael Johnson hence the podcast. One moment from the interview really resonated. Johnson told of how on entering his final year in the NCAAs the pressure was mounting. He clearly had the talent to be a champion, but injuries had curtailed his previous years. Now it was make or break. Johnson went to his coach and asked him to have a think about what they could do differently to ensure he stayed injury free and had a greater chance of success. His coach agreed to take a few days to review their training and make a plan. As Johnson went to leave the office his coach turned to him and said, ‘Michael, maybe we can think about what we haven’t been doing, that we can start to do?’. Before Johnson had reached his car in the parking lot, it had dawned on him what his coach was asking. Johnson had been phoning in his strength training over the previous seasons. Yes, he’d been going to gym but not really applying himself. He had been trying to avoid the thing he didn’t like (gym) and instead put all his effort into the thing he liked (running). As Johnson went on to describe, he had convinced himself he could be the first world class sprinter to not do weights! Being accountable to one’s actions or lack of action is something we probably need reminding of occasionally.
And so, on Monday morning I restarted my strength and conditioning programme with the Running Buddy app. There are no similarities between me and one of the greatest sprinters ever, but we all need a little wakeup call regardless of our level. I’d let my S&C slide a bit over the summer and the niggling guilt that was there with my lack of action was agitated with the Johnson interview. Time to be accountable.
The County Novice Championships are 19 days away.