The Doubt Battle

"Sometimes, the moments that challenge us the most - define us."  - Deena Kastor

Every day we are surrounded by hundreds of dissenting opinions, and a few of those opinions may even be directed at us.  I don't know about you, but I occasionally encounter some negative opinions (expressed both verbally and nonverbally) mixed in with the good.  Normal? I think so.  Why is it, then, that a single negative voice can have such a lasting impact on us?  If we hear a constant mix of the bad and the good, why does the bad always seem so much louder, so much truer, so much more memorable?  Listening to those ever-ringing negative voices more than the positive ones can have such detrimental effects to all areas of our lives, and they become even more dangerous when we hear them enough that the negativity becomes the voice that we repeat inside of our own heads, day after day.

I might be guilty of this more than most, or maybe I'm just not aware of how much other people listen to their own negative little voices all day.  Either way, it cuts into my fitness, my career, and my personal life more than I should let it.  A few weeks ago I went to the track for a very important speed workout designed into the training plan that I am following.  It's called the "Yasso 800" workout.  Basically, after a 1-2 mile warm up, you run a series of six 800-meter repeats at 100% effort, with 400 meters of slow jogging in between to let your heart rate recover (then you run a 1-2 mile cool down at the end).  Everything I've read tells me that this amazing workout is the best predictor of your marathon finishing time according to your current fitness.  If you average all 6 repeats at 4 minutes, you should finish your marathon in 4 hours.  If your time is 4 minutes and 30 seconds, your marathon finish will be 4 hours and 30 minutes.  I was hoping to average out these repeats in 4 minutes each to put me on target for a marathon finish of 4 hours.

I ran the first set and looked down at my watch.  Then I looked again.  Then I squinted and rubbed the sweat out of my eyes before I held the watch closer to my face.  3:28!  That's right, my watch said 3:28, a whopping 32 seconds faster than my goal.  Before I even gave myself a pat on the back, I heard that awful little voice.  "It's only the first set.  There's no way you can hold this for 5 more.  Clearly you didn't warm up right.  Clearly you're doing these wrong, or the articles are all completely wrong."  Suddenly I caught myself.  I realized how ridiculous this was.  Mid-lap I shook my head and shut my eyes, unclenched my fists and shook the tension out of my wrists.  "Let's try this again.  3:28, you ran 3:28!  The work is paying off!"  I realized I was smiling now, and I'd started my second set.  I felt my arm muscles take charge and my feet striking faster.  Throughout the whole workout I did this.  I kept hearing the negativity, feeling it creeping up on me, and then shoving it down deeper, forcing my own praise and realizing that I'd earned these faster times.

I averaged all of my 800s in exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds.  The negative voice was not ready to give up.  I walked away from the track coming up with all of the reasons that this kind of time really meant nothing that important, that I still had so much more progress to make.  The sound of my own negativity can almost be deafening at times.  I stopped it again though, and I celebrated.  I celebrated this single small victory, and smiled all of the way home, because I don't think that any of us do that enough. Training will break you if you don't celebrate the small victories.  Life will break you if you don't celebrate them.  If you let your whole life pass you by while you are acknowledging all of the tiny things that you could have done better without stopping to truly reward yourself for the daily improvements and milestones that you make, it will all have been for nothing.  The big steps are nothing compared to the hundred small ones we make.

That celebration paid off.  Days later when I was in the midst of an 18 mile run, feeling my fuel running low, the water sloshing in my gut while the rest of my body cried with an unquenchable thirst, I told myself that I surprised myself once this week, and this was one more chance to do it again.  Had I never celebrated that, I would have never been able to conquer my doubts when I needed to most.