MFR 132: Explaining Dreadful Runs
If you have never had a bad run, then you haven’t been running long.
Truth.
Every runner of every level has bad runs now and then. Now if you have them often, that is, of course, a problem, but as a rule, if you haven’t had a lousy run in a while, I’d say you might even want to accept that you’re overdue. Not that you should dwell on that. You shouldn’t dwell on bad runs, ever, for any reason, and you certainly shouldn’t worry if you haven’t had one in a while. What would that accomplish? Instead, celebrate your good fortune.
No, my point is just that you must accept that the occasional bad run is both inevitable and unavoidable.
This episode is focused, not on preventing bad runs, but rather on what might cause them and, most importantly, what not to consider.
Often runners, especially newer runners, reach for the easy answers, easy solutions, but more often, the easy answer, or what seems to be the easy solution, isn’t, but if the runner assumes that, it can actually lead to more bad runs because the problem is not corrected. In fact, jumping to the wrong conclusion may just exacerbate the cause.
Absolutely, do evaluate the terrible run, search for the cause, but don’t spend a lot of time on it. Let it go. Letting it upset you for days, or even for the rest of that day, will accomplish nothing.
In this episode I help you look at the possible causes, and I try to steer you away from jumping to the all-too-attractive conclusion.