The Athlete You Remember vs. The Athlete You Are Today: The Endurance Comeback

As I've been kicking around this idea and just formulating what I wanted to talk about, I had a conversation.

It was yesterday.

with an athlete that I worked with.

I worked with her and her friend recently had an injury which was a pretty significant one and it altered her plans almost for basically an entire year.

And she was talking about how they were currently training for a local marathon that is fairly close and they had done their 20 miler yesterday and they were feeling great.

But during the run, they were trying to sustain a pace that was a little bit slower relative to what they've historically run before.

As this athlete is making this comeback from this serious injury.

And the discipline that they needed to run a slower pace was a bit of a struggle for this athlete.

They found themselves creeping up in terms of getting a little bit faster beyond where they had said that they should be in order to feel good after the run and to not overextend themselves.

I find that athletes... rarely struggle with a comparison a true comparison between them and somebody else the real struggle lies when that athlete is comparing themselves to a previous version of themselves i find that to be one of the most challenging things to deal with in terms of athletics And as somebody who's coming back from an injury, it's really easy to fall back into those comparisons on, hey, I used to be able to do this.

I used to be able to run this fast, swim this fast, bike this kind of power, go this long.

I should be able to do this now.

But there's a gap between what they remember now and what their body can do right now.

I find that this is one of the most challenging things to deal with mentally and emotionally when it comes to endurance sports.

And it's something that I've had to manage basically over the past two years.

One of my areas of speciality is working with these athletes as they come back from this injury.

It's a very specific and a very methodical approach that you have to take in order to make this comeback.

And it's really easy for athletes who are self-coached to rush that process because they're trying to get back to that athlete who they were in order to feel like, oh, I'm back at square zero.

But Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get there.

And so the patience factor really is hard to manage or to be disciplined with when you are self-coached.

So that's one of the things that I do when I step in as a coach to help them.

So let's start along this storyline.

So this idea of what it is that I remember versus what it is that I can do now.