The Rearview Mirror: Life Changes
Seven-years ago I got a PR in a 5k. My time was twenty-minutes – zero seconds.
Almost a sub-twenty…almost.
At the finish line of the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike
This was at fifty-years old. Just six months later I qualified for the Boston marathon for the fourth time and did it with time to spare all the while holding back knowing it was just a ‘B’ race.
Later that year I finished the Leadville 100 run and bike just separated by a week (the bike just after the cut-off).
It all felt easy
In 2019 I felt like I was flying high – and nothing could slow me down. It felt amazing.
It wasn’t going to last.
The pandemic hit.
Finishing the Boston Marathon in 2014
While I was training for Boston in 2020, which never happened, I felt like I was moving through molasses. I wasn’t hitting my predicted splits anymore. Test runs felt awful. It felt like I was carrying a sack of potatoes.
Maybe it was the weight of the pandemic, maybe it was the unrest that our nation was experiencing at the time. Maybe I had peaked and was on a downward trend. I’ve scoured my training repeatedly to see if there was something I was doing that was off.
There wasn’t.
For six years I kept trying to chase it… I kept telling myself that I could certainly go under twenty-minutes in the 5k! I could get back to where I was and even faster in the marathon – and crush a hundred-mile race. But…year after year things got slower.
I finished several ultra’s since then – much slower than I’d ever have thought I’d run. I had four more attempts in Leadville – and while sometimes there was a glimmer of an old self showing up – I couldn’t muster the speed I once had. The next marathon I did I was fifteen minutes slower than 2019…albeit I was first in my age group.
Nothing changed dramatically about the training – I was just getting slower.
There can be a million reasons why I am slowing down. The most likely reason is simple… I’m getting older.
My VO2max ceiling is slowly dropping. It’s harder to recover from runs, and top end speed just doesn’t feel right sometimes.
That all said – the biggest problem is spending too much time looking in the rearview mirror.
The Rearview Mirror
When we spend time looking in the rearview mirror, we start comparing to a person we’ll never be again…
That can sound really depressing but hear me out.
We’ll never be the exact same person we were a moment ago. Our bodies are constantly changing. That’s a given. When we’re focused on the rearview mirror, we can’t be present and we can’t move forward.
When we’re present, we can focus on the things we can control. Things like strength training, nutrition, rest and have the energy for the workout that’s right in front of us.
None of this negates having high, hard goals
It just means if we’re focused on the rearview mirror – on comparing ourselves to the past – we’ll never reach those other goals that are right in front of us. It takes up energy in our minds and space in our hearts.
It’s okay to check-in to see where you’ve been. But to use it as a guideline of where you are right now or where you’re going isn’t fair to yourself.
The same goes after an injury
When we’re coming off an injury of course our fitness is going to be different. Our approach to training may be different. Our body may be different. For some people it may take years to get back to that level of fitness – if at all. But it does no good comparing yourself to where you were.
Grieving
Sometimes we just need to grieve the changes. Notice the feeling of loss in the body.
We’re not who we once were.
It hurts.
Like the loss of a loved one it brings sadness, despair, anger, and denial. It’s all part of the process of loss.
We can’t make it go away – but we can bring ourselves self-compassion, kindness to ourselves, notice that we’re not alone in this process. We can bring acceptance and openness to the discomfort of the loss and changes happening.
…And we can lean into how we want to show up for ourselves, others, and the world around us. We can have agency in how we respond and move forward. Glancing ever so slightly in the rearview mirror and smiling at that person – then looking ahead and moving forward.