Working Hard and the Feeling of Being Unstoppable Until It's Unsustainable.

I'm all for good old-fashioned hard work.

Without the will to work, it's all but impossible to achieve a substantial goal.

However, while putting your head down and grinding it out has its place in helping you reach the next level, it can also prevent you from getting there as well.

There's a line between working hard and working too hard.

If you don't work hard, you won't get the result. If you work too hard, you also won't get the result!

Most runners I've met, including myself, have had a period when they've approached training with an unrelenting fire.

Training with fire has two results: shine so bright and feel unstoppable, or fizzle out so quickly and feel completely embarrassed and demoralized.

Like most people, most (definitely not all) of my mistakes were towards the beginning of my running journey.

My first two years of college were filled with some of the best performances of my life (at the time) mixed in with my worst.

I could train hard. I could put my head down and put my foot on the gas almost every day. I would race well, but looking back, even my "breakthrough" races were underperformances if you saw the training I was doing.

If you were around me during those years I probably made a lot of stupid excuses and said things like "My training

says I can run this x time" or "I just need more tempos."

My mind and goals were much further ahead than where my physical ability was.

I think many younger runners are like this - a bit reckless, but they don't seek to change because they can get away with it. They race well enough, but every race seems like it wasn't up to par with the work they put in. Following this is a neverending cycle of justifying why that race happened the way that it did.

I did this for a while until I would massively blow up in races and find myself physically and mentally incapable

le of training the way I once did.

This is classic "burn-out".

I was a pro at burning out, too. Over 3 years, I would come into a season of racing in better shape than ever but fell well short by the end of the season, the part that matters most.

Eventually, I concluded that I couldn't approach training this way anymore, not if I wanted to reach my potential.

I still kept my focus and worked hard, but instead of being all or nothing, I approached my training with more patience, did a little less, and always finished my workouts feeling like I could do more.

No more redlining from rep number 1. I dropped the need to chase numbers and practice PRs and turned my focus inward - a performance-based approach.

Unsurprisingly, my performances increased dramatically, and I finished an entire season of racing knowing I had reached my potential.

My point here is that

I know that we can want something so badly that we are willing to go all the way for it, but I don't think this is the best way to do it.