What to do when you can’t do the run you want to do?

Do the run you can do.

Work goes late. Homework piles up. You need to babysit. You’ve got to check in on your parents. You rolled your ankle. You got sick. You missed the bus. The car broke down. The roads are covered in ice. The lightning won’t stop. You’re stuck in an airport. You’re not as fit as you were. You’re not as fit as you’d like to be. You can’t do the run you want to do.

I get it. And I know what you’re thinking of doing. Beating yourself up. Dragging yourself down. Tearing yourself apart and inside out. Here come the voices in your head. You’re lazy. You’re weak. You don’t have what it takes.

Tell those jackass voices to shut up. Here’s the deal… I don’t care how much time you don’t have. I care about how much time you do have. I don’t about care what you could do yesterday or what you want to do tomorrow. I want to know what you can do today. It’s not that I don’t care about who you were. I’m sure you were great. And it’s not that I’m not interested who you can be. I’m sure you’ll be fantastic. It’s just that this version of you… the one you are here and now… that’s the only you I can work with. This you. The one you are today.

So, right now you want to run for 30 minutes but you only have time for 15?

Well, 15 sounds good to me. You want to run for 8K but it started to lightning so you had to stop at 3K. Well, that was the right thing to do. And it’s never wrong to do the right thing. You want to run today but after school you have to work so today’s run is shaping up to be no run. Okay. It happens.

Do you think belittling yourself is going to make you a better runner? It won’t.

Do you think being a jerk to yourself is going to make up for the minutes, meters or miles you couldn’t run? It won’t.

Do you think making yourself feel bad will lead to a good performance? It won’t.

Do you think making a bad situation worse is what leads to a better one? It doesn’t.

So, do me a favor. If you can’t do the run you want to do… do the run you can do. If you can do that then you’ll always be running the run you need to do.