As I completed the third lap of 2km on my run today, I realised that I went out a little fast. How fast did I go? Well, I went out one second per kilometre faster than what I had planned which in 2km made a grand difference of 2 seconds. I thought to myself, "Did I do something wrong? Did I sabotage the workout?" Reflecting a little on that, gave me a real big insight on how the quest to be perfect so nearly took away the joy of a job well done.
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Sure, I was running much faster than I could even dream of a few years ago and I was doing it quite comfortably. The run was supposed to be "comfortably hard effort", at approximately a pace which I could sustain for an hour. It is fine to go slower is what running gurus and pundits say. But here I was a single second per kilometre faster than I had planned to go, a single second outside the 10 seconds band I had set as a target zone. But here were a few variables. With the thundershowers last night, the weather was humid. There were a lot of puddles I had to dodge as I ran. I had to be mindful of the traffic. In short, the conditions were far from ideal for a good run.
At most distance races(10k, Half Marathons, Marathons, etc.), there are pacers who help set the pace for anyone who wants to finish their run in a particular time. A good pacer would set a strategy based on the course, and follow it so that anyone who aspires to finish within a particular time can do so by running with the pacer. He or she would make the run, simple and fun for anyone who wants to achieve their goal time, with a margin of up to around a minute, based on the instructions from the race organizers. But unfortunately, a lot of them only care about their own finish time, which they can flaunt on social media. In order to get the perfect timing, they tend to either speed up or slowdown or sometimes even run the other way to get the most accurate finish time that they can. But is such perfection possible in an imperfect setting? Is such perfection, a genuinely good job? Or is it just manipulation? Don't we see these perfect results every day on social media? It may be a friend or an influencer on Instagram. Do we really know what they did to get that perfect result?
Before I started my fourth lap, I reminded myself on why I set off on today's run. The goal was to run a set distance at a comfortably hard effort, with a focus on maintaining a good posture, breathing well and getting the mileage which I had planned for today. The pace range was just a guideline. I reminded myself that missing the guideline by a whisker need not undermine an amazing workout which I did. A workout whose results I will see in my next target race. It is important to embrace the imperfections. Instant perfect results are often just a machine made result, or man-made manipulation or sometimes just plain luck!!
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