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- May 1, 2011
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Great story @MTF, and really illustrates how I prefer to do things.
I personally think people take getting out of their comfort zone a bit too far. The word comfortable even seems to have negative conotations nowadays. Sometimes we can make better progress while being comfortable. Not everything has to be pushing beyond the limit, or even timed/measured.
When I trained too hard I got injured, which set me back mentally as well as physically. My PBs seemed to come after weeks of consistent training - where I didn't appear to be making progress but instead enjoyed the training sessions and banter with other athletes. Then out would pop a time way faster than I'd run previous.
Similarly, when I rode motorbikes my best experiences came when I focused on being smooth rather than fast. I remember the first time I got my knee down, and how surprised I was because I wasn't even trying to get my knee down that ride.
If we don't enjoy the journey then we only take pleasure in reaching our destination, which seems a shame as the journey is such a big part of the experience.
These are very good examples and something which I'm only beginning to internalize better now. Previously I would push so hard that I would injure myself, have bad experiences, or even create traumas that would forever discourage me from certain things.
And of course, you don't really enjoy the journey that much if you're always pushing for more, never stopping to enjoy your current level.
Last year I wanted to achieve a certain distance while open water swimming. Because I no longer treated swimming as a relaxing activity for recovery but as a workout to get to that certain distance, I no longer enjoyed it that much. It was too much and felt too much like a job. I could only enjoy it again when I had zero agenda and no specific distance to complete each time I went swimming.
It’s almost like the more difficult thing to do is to control the desire to ‘feel’ like you’re working hard and just put in consistent, metered effort.
Because for many people it is harder to go easy than go hard. If you're driven, you want to do as much as you can to improve. But often the fastest and most sustainable improvement comes when you do it slowly (which is too slowly to bear for many people so they do it faster and end up injured, burnt out or worse, setting themselves back).
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