It's Starting That Matters

This weekend I took part in the Brighton Half Marathon. The prospect of running 13.1 miles (21km) is pretty intimidating at the best of times, especially when you haven’t done a lot of training leading up to it. So last week I decided that rather than risk injury, I wouldn’t be running. The longest run I’d done in the previous wintry weeks was 50 minutes – only a third of the time I was likely to take. However, my fellow runners persuaded me that I could always drop out if I wanted or walk it.

Now as a coach, who encourages my clients to challenge themselves, this might seem like a defeatist attitude but actually what I find tends to happen, is that if you take the pressure off achieving a goal, what seems like a real challenge becomes far less intimidating and you’ve taken out the emotional and mental pressure of achieving it. All I was going to do now was go out for a “gentle Sunday jog” and if I ended up walking it that was OK too. This meant that I didn’t have anything to lose and was under absolutely no pressure from myself (at least) to complete it.

Of course having other people I knew taking part helps as a motivator but as I set off, I didn’t worry about the entire distance or even completing it (well, not much), I settled into my pace (slow) and focused on just getting from one mile marker to the next. Each one taking me one mile closer to the finish line. If I had to slow down and walk that was OK too, as long as I didn’t stop completely. Having made it to eight miles there were only five to go and then four, three, two and then into the home stretch and I was hardly about to give up with the finishing line in sight.

So, if you have a big goal that seems just a little overwhelming or you can’t see the end point when you start off, just think about the first few steps and take one step at a time. You don’t have to go full tilt all the way, if you need to slow down or go at your own pace and not everyone else’s, then do that. No one says you have to come in first, it's starting and finishing that matters, not how fast you do it.