Sometimes I wonder if the running lessons are ever going to dry up. I mean, if they do, they do. But I suspect that isn't going to happen any time soon, if ever. It certainly isn't going to happen today, or for my next training block.
That saying that goes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back is supposed be a negative. You make a step towards progress, and then you go two steps back from there. But, I don't know...
I'm about to take some giant steps back in my training--starting back at the beginning, in some ways. It's not negative. But it's also not comfortable.
The entirety of my past four and a half years has been one step forward, two steps back; or more like one step forward, one step forward, three steps to the left, four up a hill, ten back into my past, 3500 running straight out of there, fast. Point being, sometimes two steps back is exactly what needs to happen. You do it to regroup. You do it to go pick up what you left back there. You do it to make sure you're headed in the right direction. It can feel like regression. It can feel like failure. But I don't think it is. We are so conditioned to ever onward, and actually I kind of like that sentiment--as long as we know that onward doesn't always mean forward, and it's likely never linear. It isn't necessarily regression or failure, either. It's learning. And learning can go in any direction.
In my case with running, it's almost like going back to take a breath, or to remind myself of how far I've come and what I've learned. I've gotten so in my head about running, and so in my head about life, and they really play off of each other. So, my new 4 week training block is going back to get ahead. I'm taking all of the tools I've gathered the last four years and I'm going back to the foundation to fill in the gaps. And since running imitates life, fingers crossed for a new bounce in my step and a fresh perspective in the month ahead.