Patience is key

It's funny how life gives you lessons in ways that you didn't see coming. My oldest daughter has recently taken up the sport of volleyball. She decided in the early part of her freshman year that she wanted to play volleyball and make the junior varsity team at her high school next year. Since she has never played volleyball, or any sport for that matter, this meant that she would need to prepare.

My daughter spoke to a couple of her friends who were on the freshman team to get some pointers as to what to do to get ready for tryouts. As it turns out, some of the girls also play on a recreational team outside of school and essentially play all year round doing indoor volleyball in the fall, winter and spring and beach volleyball in the summer. My daughter contacted the coach of the team and soon she was doing an evaluation to see if she would be able to join.

My wife and I wanted to help her in anyway possible so we bought a volleyball and started practicing. My wife became her conditioning coach and helped get her physical fitness up. I helped with all the basic volleyball moves and simple drills to get her prepared. I even took an online volleyball coaching class so that I could be a better coach. Little by little she was getting the hang of the sport.

One day after her second practice she told me she was upset that she wasn't able to serve the ball over the net. I praised her for how hard she was working, that she should cut herself some slack, and that if she kept working as hard as she has been she'll be getting the ball over the net in no time. But I could see that my words were falling on deaf ears. She said, "I just want to get these awkward stages out of the way and just play". I continued to try and tell her that with practice and patience she'll be playing the way she wants in no time.

I'm not sure what clicked in my head but in that moment of talking with my daughter about being patient and going easy on herself, I couldn't help but realize that I should apply those same words to myself. A couple of weeks ago I was doing some intervals to start working on getting some speed. I did 4x800's with a 400m recovery. For one 800 meter I was clocked at 3:52 and averaged about the same time for the second 800 meters making my overall pace for a mile about 7:48. 

This was the fastest I have EVER been. Do you want to know the first thing that I thought about? I could've gotten it to an even 7:45. Uh... hello! 

Runners are always thinking about going faster and pushing harder. After my coaching class and hearing that the majority of my runs each week should be at conversation pace (easy pace) I couldn't help but feel like I was running too slow. What do they know anyway? You're supposed to run hard every single time you step out the door. Why do we always want to go faster, be bigger and stronger and not just enjoy the space that we're in at the moment? 

I remember the last time (which was my first time) doing intervals and I could barely maintain a 9 minute pace. I thought my lungs were going to collapse on themselves and I would have to be hauled off the track. Now I'm able to do a 7:48 mile and I couldn't even appreciate that moment. 

Until I heard my daughter stress about not getting her serve and totally neglecting the positive accomplishments that she had, I didn't think I was guilty of the same thing. When talking with other runners about races I never divulged my times. I would often tell people that it wasn't about time for me, it was about the love of running. But that was bull crap. I didn't divulge my time because I didn't want to talk about it until I reached my magic pace (which is 7:30 by the way). 

But why not share in ALL of my accomplishments. Like the first time I was able to run 10 miles without stopping. I couldn't even tell you what my time was because I don't remember. All I remember is feeling like such a bad ass that I ran the entire time. Then there was the moment when I ran to a song that I have on my running playlist that used to be so hard to keep pace with. Now when I hear that song and run to the beat it feels as though I'm running in slow motion.

I have to keep in mind that I've only been running for about a year and a half now. In retrospect this is all still very new to me and there are things that I'm still learning as I go along. But I often forget that within this small amount of time, I've managed to grow leaps and bounds. I should be proud of the milestones that I have made and not neglect them for my future goals. So why do I constantly focus on getting faster when I should be happy about how fast I've already gotten?

'Cause I'm a runner. :)