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***CONTENT WARNING***, mental health talk ahead.
So, some years ago I started getting treatment for anxiety, not like horrific life-altering can't-function-in-the-world-on-a-daily-basis anxiety but a kind of constant, low-grade-but-sometimes-*less*-low-grade anxiety that, when I stopped to think about it, I had really suffered from for basically my entire teenage & adult life.
There were some ways in which it manifested in running, mostly around perfectionism and catastrophizing about races and psyching myself out, then super beating myself up if things didn't go at least acceptably okay. (Not productive, do not recommend.)
And then there was a period of time (~2017ish to ~2019sih?) where I started to have some weird issues every time I'd go to the track, which historically had always been my favorite workout of the week. I was telling my therapist about this once incidentally, how sometimes I would be warming up and not even doing anything hard yet and my heart rate would shoot up really high and I'd have this ringing in my ears and a sensation like ice water running through my veins, and my hands would shake a little and suddenly I'd feel lightheaded and have a hard time catching my breath. Weird, huh? So yeah, anyway!
And my therapist was like, "Uhhhh back up there chief, do you think maybe you were maybe having a little panic attack?"
And I just scoffed like, "What? Now that is ridiculous. Of course I wasn't having a panic attack. I think I'd know if I was having a panic attack."
And she was like, "Uhhhhh are you sure about that because I am a therapist whose job it is to know these things and tbh it kind of sounds like a little mini panic attack."
And I was like, "Madam. Please. WHY on EARTH would I be having a PANIC ATTACK before my track workout?"
And she was like, "EXCELLENT QUESTION MY FRIEND, PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, PERHAPS TO SOMEONE LIKE I DUNNO ME, UR LITERAL THEREAPIST????"
So, okay, fine. We started talking about it and HOLY SHIT I'm pretty sure she was right. Even though I did not have any emotional sensation of panic or anxiety while it was happening, the more we talked about it the more I realized that for some reason, some part of me was starting to feel very, very worried about a) how physically hard and painful track workouts were going to feel, and b) what if I can't hit the paces when I have ALWAYS been able to hit the paces? What then?? What does it MEAN?? How bad is it supposed to hurt and if it hurts MORE than that how am I supposed to make sense of that information?? Cue panic attack.
I am so happy to report that this doesn't happen to me anymore. It happens very very occasionally on easy runs if I am having a hard day and feeling super sluggish, but now that I know what it is, all I have to do is stop for a bit and take some deep breaths and let my heart rate come down, which on an easy day is just fine. But I don't think it's happened to me with workouts for a good while now.
Long story short, the most useful tactic I found in this battle was locating and learning to channel my inner jock. Like yes on the surface there is this high-strung, type-A, kind of neurotic, hyperrational, overthinking, over-analyzing kind of athlete that (ironically) wants to logick everything out with thinking and reasoning and (ironically) ends up having a panic attack at the first inkling of something not feeling or going perfectly.
But digging a little deeper (ok maybe a lot deeper), I was able to find this kind of big dumb jock that was like, "Og not think. Og just run." And when my neurotic side asks, "BUT WHAT IF IT ISN'T FAST ENOUGH or WHAT IF IT HURTS LIKE SOOO MUCH???", the big dumb jock just kind of blinks in confusion and shrugs. "Og not understand. So much thinking hard and boring. Og just run."
If you are into weights (or just interested in various cool and inclusive feminist takes on fitness/wellness), I cannot highly enough recommend the newsletter She's A Beast from noted Swole Woman Casey Johnston. Just, go sign up now, and you will get to experience the thrill of receiving newsletters with titles like "The Singular Joy of a Rep, or What We Have to Learn From the Bros."
Casey sent this newsletter, and all I could do was jump up and down going "That's it! That's my track caveman!" E.g.:
I think [what] the bros have to offer—and I'm not really joking at all here—[is] knowing how to cultivate a sort of small-brained joy about the specific task of working out.
...[D]eveloping a positive relationship with your body can be a really long and complicated journey. But bros are keyed into the sort of love of the incremental motions that lead to an appreciation of their body that, frankly, the vast majority of us don't have.
...Arnold [Schwarzenegger] speaks very reverently of the feeling of "the pump." And while all of his fellow bro-dudes clearly enjoy hanging out together in the gym, they are also about their business of doing rep after rep.
...That is what the bro has to offer us the most of all: The Singular Joy of a Rep. If you stay prejudiced against the joy of a single rep, and think it’s dumb or smooth-brained or basic to like it, I feel like you might have a rougher time than you need to [doing athletic stuff]. But if you can enjoy a rep, you can enjoy the whole process of working out, and maybe even the whole process of doing health stuff.
If you replace "rep" with "hard interval" (and I guess in a way intervals actually really are reps), I think there is a good analogy here with running workouts. You can't overthink it. You can't get too caught up in "ok but when is this going to make me fast" and "how much faster" and "how much more of this awfulness do I have to endure" and "uuggghhhh [x] is a really big freaking number when you're talking about [intervals of y length], this sucks so much." No; that is not the way.
If you're going to last in an activity that requires repeatedly engaging in a certain amount of discomfort as part of its existential core, you can't get stuck on "is this over yet" or "when do I start seeing results." You have to find the singular joy, or at the very least, the satisfaction, of running one hard interval--just one--and how good it feels to experience your body doing something so hard and awesome. And then you do it again. And again. And again.
These days when I go to the track, my attitude is usually somewhere between, "Cool, track day, let's see how fast I can run, and however fast that is is fine," and complete indifference. I have learned to embrace my inner jock, the one that, when faced with something potentially hard where it's possible to fail in some way, just grunts & goes, "Eh. Less thinking, more running."
Like, what if the reps aren't "fast enough," ie, the times on the plan? OH FRICKIN' WELL. I still did them. Og has neither the time nor the inclination to have feelings about trying hard and not hitting the pace. Too much hard and boring thinking involved, Og has other things to do.
What if the reps felt harder than I think, *for some reason*, they should have? EH. This is not Og's concern. Og lacks the emotional depths to have, like, feelings about how hard something did or did not feel. Og has one great joy and it is the joy of the one hard rep, be it fast, slow, or ugly.
Essentially, what I learned to get in touch with was: Stop trying to ascribe meaning to everything that does or doesn't work out at the track. Stop wasting energy thinking about it. Just, like, do it, and whatever happens, oh well. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't. When it's over, it's over. Get small-brained about it. Enjoy the pump in the moment, and if the time's not good, then toss it down the memory hole and get on with life. Less thinking, more running
~*~*~1 Week to Stow Lake Stampede 5K~*~*~
Grand Total: 32.5 miles
- * 24.9 easy
* 2 tempo
* 5.6 speed
Monday 5/9: Rest
Tuesday 5/10: a.m. 1 hour strength + p.m. 5 easy w/ strides
Wednesday 5/11: 2.75 warm up, 400m/200m jog, 800m/400m jog, 1600m/800m jog, 800m/400m jog, 400m/200m jog, 3 cool down = 9.5 total. After one of the reps I went to get a drink of water & accidentally left my watch running, so later I thought I would get fancy & crop out the extra .06 miles at 51:00 pace. Joke's on me, instead I just made an utter mess of things. So yeah. Fuck with your Strava data at your peril. On the other hand, did I run these 400ms at sub-6:00 pace? Heck yeah, I did.
Thursday 5/12: 3 easy to/from gym + 1 hour strength
Friday 5/13: 5 easy w/ strides
Saturday 5/14: Rest
Sunday 5/15: 3 warm up, 2 @ tempo/.5 jog, 5 x (400m fast / 200m jog), 2.7 cool down = 10 total. Friends, this was the worst I've felt in a workout in some time. My legs felt heavy & sluggish from the get-go. I kind of stunned myself with 2 pretty comfortable tempo miles at 7:20, but you can see that my 400m splits were far from the ~1:20-1:30ish I was running easily earlier in the week. Halfway through this workout I kept thinking, "This feels weirdly familiar," then realized that I actually felt a lot like I did at the April 24 8K--sluggish and tired for no discernable reason, and heavy, dead legs with no pop to speak of. I muscled through the repeats but it was not pretty, and I took several walk breaks on the 2.7 mile jog home from the track.
BUT BUT BUT--and here's the key--a couple years ago I would have had an internal anxiety meltdown about what it all means and making myself nuts trying to come up with a reason why I felt this way, because if there is a reason it means there is something you can fix and maybe be in control of it. But no; Og's got this one. "Og no think. Og no ruminate & analyze. Og just run. Less thinking, more running."
So, yeah. Shitty runs happen. Whatever, man. Less thinking, more running.
I wish there was a 'like' button I could click. THX.
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