Run 23, 2010 … on the relative abundance of bad, good, and average days…

Today’s run was 11 km on the indoor track and I felt really bad going into it. It took me 14 laps before the majority of the pain I felt began to disappear. I started out with 3 laps, the first walking, the second a slow easy run, and the last one was also a walk with a pause for some serious pre-run stretching. After my 3 lap warm-up I began my 14 lap ordeal. As I began running, I thought to myself: This is going to take forever! During the winter, I do a total of 50 laps indoors every Wednesday. During these indoor track runs, I try to run at least 10 km as a speed run. It allows me to escape for one day the rigors of winter running outdoors.

Anyway, I still felt very very sore and fragile after last Sunday’s 21 km run outdoors, not to mention yesterday’s karate class. I’m not at all surprised that it took me 14 slow laps just to shake loose, get warm, and lose the pain. The MT joint behind my big toe on my right foot was really swollen and painful, plus I felt like my entire skeleton was made of glass shards sending electric shocks through my whole body with each step. I am surprised that I lost most of the pain and managed a much better pace for the remaining 30 laps, still I was grateful for the 3 lap cool down at the end.

So I would say that today was a bad day. A really bad day would be one in which I either failed to run a scheduled run at all, or else I bailed at some point during the run and did not finish. A good day is one where I run well, with an above average pace for me. So an average day would be where I run my normal pace without losing too much time – and not being in a huge amount of pain that wouldn’t quite heal before the next workout.

It may seem obvious that I would have an equal amount of good days vs bad days, thus giving me an average (hence an “average day”) but that is not the case. I’m very sure I don’t have a whole lot of bad days, and even fewer really really bad days. And I am also pretty sure that I have a lot of good days. Nevertheless, most days are average days, neither good nor bad.

Perhaps you think it is pointless to write about the obvious. Everyone has good, bad, and average days, after all, right? You may be right, but I think it is therapeutic and even beneficial to verbalize and document one’s running history. In this way, you can gain an objective perspective on your running that can help you get through the bad days and even to help you accept and dismiss the really really bad days. So the next time you are in a really despondent mood because you’ve just bailed out during a run, or you have a really bad run, remember to focus on the average and good runs, which are – or should be – in the vast majority of your runs. If average and good runs do not greatly outweigh the bad ones – then you are surely doing something very wrong and you need to get help.