Running Battles: The Anatomy of a Bad Run

Everyone who runs long enough has had it happen to them - the strange, uncomfortable and troubling phenomenon that is the bad run. It happens to the best of us.


Jenny Goellnitz |

Everyone who runs long enough has had it happen to them – the strange, uncomfortable and troubling phenomenon that is the bad run. It happens to the best of us. – By Jenny Goellnitz

Sweat

A bad run can be of several different varieties.

1. There is the run where you set out to run a certain distance (often one you have covered easily in the past) and instead discover yourself exhausted well before you reach the goal.

2. There is the run where you go out to run a certain number of repeats, and find yourself unduly stressed by the first few, with no hope of making it through the entire workout.

3. Then there is the run where you aim for a certain pace, but find yourself simply and completely unable to cling to it.

4. And then there are those every day runs where you find yourself struggling mightily to run your regular easy pace. There are even runs that go so badly that force you to walk or to stop running for the day or that may make you physically sick.

Although you may actually get physically sick from a bad run, usually the sickness amounts to little more than some stomach cramps or some nausea and it goes away. Almost always, the physical sickness is transient and relatively harmless. What lingers far beyond the physical effects of the bad run is the mental consequences. The bad run is most troubling not for the physical discomfort it induces, but rather for the mental discomfort it provokes.

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The first reaction to a bad run is to try to locate a cause for the poor run. Often a reason for a bad run does exist – perhaps you did not hydrate well enough. Maybe the weather was poor – too hot, too cold, too windy or too humid. Perhaps you did not get enough sleep the night before. It is also possible you have a virus. Or it could be as simple as you did not eat adequately or you ingested the wrong thing, perhaps simply at the wrong time.

There are a myriad of reasons that can sensibly and logically explain away a poor performance. A smart runner seeks to learn from experience so as to avoid making the same error again. We analyse past performances, we learn from our mistakes, and we become better runners for it.

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Sometimes, however, there is simply no logical reason or explanation for a bad run. It is these bad runs that really play with the psyche. Those of us who stick with the sport learn that these bad days will happen from time to time and that we will recover from them.

When you are recovering from a bad run, remember that you just cannot expect every run to be a “good” one; that is expecting too much from running and will lead to disappointment. You cannot expect running to always be fun and easy. This is especially true if you doing the type of running necessary to improve your race performances. But even those just running for “fun” will not always have a “good run.”

There will be days where you don’t “feel” like running. There will be days when you don’t finish the distance or don’t meet a time or pace goal. We all have those days. They are part of life. They are part of being human – we are not machines. We are living beings, with bodies that are subject to elements we cannot control – the weather, the stresses of every day life, even our own biological idiosyncrasies.

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We all start running for many reasons, but I really believe we keep running because we enjoy it. No matter how caught up you get in improving your running, please do not forget to every so often to just run for the pleasure of running. Run to watch the sun rise or set.

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Enjoy the pleasure of listening to your footfalls. Or the rhythm of your breathing. If you set out to have a “good day” and things don’t click, try again. You cannot force a “good day.” And know that sometimes it may really be just a matter of the mind and how you are looking at things. After all, a bad day running certainly beats not being able to run at all!

Long may you run!

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