Never lie to your mind
On the trap of choosing to slow down
Choosing to slow down is a big deal. It is essentially one part of our mind betraying the other part. It’s different from what runners call “dying,” which is when you have no choice except to slow down or even to stop because you’ve given it simply everything and you can’t go on. If you gauge it right sometimes you can come back from dying, though it’s hard. When you come back from dying, you’ll never get the run that you wanted, but you might get a run that you don’t regret.
Choosing to slow down is a different matter. Choosing to slow down feels strategic, because it’s a choice. You think to yourself about whether or not you can make it up that hill, or if you’re going to make it through the rest of your run, and you think that you’ll just slow down so that you can conserve your energy. But in that moment you’re trusting your doubts instead of considering your strength. You’re thinking about the future during an activity that only has to do with the present.
Practically, what you’re doing when you choose to slow down is forcing yourself to take much longer to get where you’re going. You might think you’re conserving energy, but in the end you’re not. The longer you have to shuffle along, thinking about the future, the longer your muscles and knees and lungs have to yell at you, and the longer the doubting side of your mind has to take over.
If you have chosen to slow down the only antidote is to force yourself to speed up again. That is very hard, so it is best to always try to keep up the pace you intended. For me that means that, if I set out on a long, slow distance run, then that’s where I must stay; if it’s middle distance at a good clip, that is what I committed to, and I must keep it up. The alternative is total failure: failure of my mind, failure of the run that day, failure of my practice. I have found over the years that the world doesn’t end when I fail myself, but I have stepped into a hole I dug myself and it is only me who can climb out of it. No help is coming.
If you find yourself in a position where you think that you might choose to slow down, think quickly about what it’s going to take out of you. If you keep that bounce in your step, or you pull your knees up just a little higher, will you “die”? If it will, choose that, because that will give you a run you don’t regret and can be proud of. You will get your energy back on the next downhill, or the next straightaway, or the next run.
But if you choose to slow down, then you have to deal with that: grind, betrayal, taking longer than we have to. The choice is the choice of doubt: a trap we set for ourselves, step into with thanks, and then quickly regret.