When I started training for the New York Marathon I was very focussed on the goal. I was setting PB’s in all sorts of distances and I was ready to ramp my training up and run a good solid first marathon. My goals were modest (4.30-4.45) but were terribly exciting for me. Then I went to the physio with a strong lower back/glute pain and then next thing I knew I was being injected with radioactive fluid and tearing open the sticker on a St Vincents Clinic folder to read the diagnosis. After looking at some disturbing images of my bone scans I squinted and saw a black spot and figured that was the bit that lead to the ‘recent sacral stress fracture’ bit of the letter. Bugger.
Still – I had a lot of other stuff going on and although I was very disappointed, I thought I handled it quite well. I remained hopeful of still running until I saw the doctor and got my crutches. Looks like I would be a spectator. Still – New York! Awesome! (Turns out it is less awesome when one hasn’t walked more than a few metres in the last 6 months, but being there with ones favourite person makes it a lot more fun).
Fast forward to a year later and I ran that marathon. It was painful. My lead up was patchy. Very patchy. I had a nice program to get me there and I did all the long runs, but the speed sessions and some of the shorter runs fell away. My preparation was not idea. 2-3 runs a week, and no speed work. 40 odd km a week compared to the 70-90k I was ramping up to at my ‘breaking point’. Cripes. It was a race between my body and my fitness. My body would be going well, no pain, good stability and feeling fine but I would be struggling to run more than a few km. Then I would build the fitness (slowly… very slowly) and all would be great, until the niggles started again. You get the picture. The highs, the lows, no in betweens. No consistency.Â
I ran the marathon and it hurt. I had a foot injury and from about 15k it was letting me know it was there. By 21k it was shouting and by 30k it had lost its voice and was a seething locus of impotent fury. That is, it hurt like a motherf*cker. I was pretty emotional at the end. This itself is understandable – what a lead up – and I finally finished! Unfortunately it also resulted in getting literally choked up to the point of struggling to breathe. Luckily a lady at the finish grabbed me and told me I needed to remember to breathe out. Phew. That could have ended badly.
The pain continued until the nice doctors in Cuba gave me a prescription for something i believe to be anti-inflammatories. After they told me I was too fat to run marathons. Thanks. Can you see your own shoes over your gut? But point taken.Â
Anyway, 6 months later and I have started to reflect on this marathon and what it means to me from the perspective of positive psychology’s self concordance theory. The theory says that there are two broad categories of goals. There are autonomous goals, and there are external goals. External goals may be introjected (the sense of the goal being something you ‘should do’ and that may be something that you carry from an authority figure from the past). They may also be purely external in that you have a goal because you are told to do it. This is frequently seen in work contexts. External goals are associated with less satisfaction upon reaching the goal and lower levels of psychological wellbeing. There are ways to work with external goals to create an autonomous goal (connecting to core values etc) – but that is not my point. I will get to the point. Promise.
Autonomous goals are different. The first category of autonomous goals are intrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals are related to things that you do purely for the love of it. Motivation is inherent. It will often be something that you have always ‘just done’ or something that you can get so involved in that you lose track of time. You love the process. It is – intrinsic and it is part of who you are. You might see this in musicians or artists who have a sense of a calling – that this is just what they do – it is as much a part of their make up as a right arm (ok this is an overstatement – but you get my drift). This would not be me and running or my goal to run a marathon. If you’d told me I would run around the block when I was 17 I would have laughed and moved on to my next packet of salt and vinegar chips, or pineapple UDL. Good one! Imagine if I knew I’d run a marathon. We can safely say that running is not intrinsic in me. But it is also not external, so what is it?
This goal would fit into the second category of autonomous goals knows as identified goals. These are goals that we have decided are meaningful and consistent with our core values and so are strongly motivating to us. The consistency with our core values is the key here. Some of my core values are health (despite my varying commitment to this one, it is there…) and challenging myself (among others). Clearly, my goal to run a marathon fits these values and thus I could continue to pursue the goal, despite a lot of hurdles because it was an identified, autonomous goal – which I was motivated to achieve. If I just thought running a marathon was a good idea or something I should check off my to-do list, then there is no way I could have persevered. But it meant something to me beyond that. It represented health, it represented a challenge and it was also connected to another core value of mine which is building relationships – and my running friends are very important to me and the support I got from them was fabulous.
Perhaps the most fantastic piece of this puzzle is that I would probably have been just as happy if I hadn’t made it to that run again. Because it is the process of training and striving to achieve the goal that provided me with the major boosts to my wellbeing. This is the bonus prize of pursuing goals that are autonomous (intrinsic or identified) is that it is the striving for the goals and not the achieving that leads to the wellbeing. On top of that, autonomous goals are more likely to be achieved – which in my case they were. But really – it was the journey that made me happier, fitter and more confident in my ability to do something that I would never have dreamed I could do.Â
So now I find myself in the position of being a bit ambivalent about running. I know I don’t want to stop. But I don’t desperately want to run another marathon (although I have unfinished business with it) and I don’t even particularly want to run another half marathon. So I won’t. I will continue to run because it is part of what I do at the moment. But I will do it for the enjoyment of it until there is something that triggers my desire to jump back out of my comfort zone.
To that end, this weeks running log:
Sunday – 9k with lovely Lulu at the bay, 6.30 avg pace.
Tuesday – 8k – 6.40 avg pace – about 3k with that lovely boy of mine before he went and ran fast, and I continued to run slowly for a bit long.
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Over and out.
Ellie
Ellie's Blog 