Setting Goals
Musing about running goals while enjoying time off from running, sometimes the best ideas present themselves while daydreaming, March, 2019.
First week after the marathon I was on such a fabulous high! Thrilled and proud of myself that I ran 42,195 km. I was so incredibly impressed what my mind and body can do, once I set my mind to it and train my body to do it. And then it hit me.
After race blues are real. It is fascinating how we work towards something with such a concentration, discipline and dedication that once it is done and gone we simply don’t know what to do with ourselves. Our minds fog up. This fog settled in for a while after the Athens Marathon. During this time my routines and habits helped a lot, and were the reasons why I set my alarm in the evenings and got out of my bed in the mornings. My days were filled with teaching yoga and meditation, in between I headed out for long walks, meditated outdoors, and every other day I went for a run. In addition, most of my mornings started with a cycle to the ocean, nothing beats the afterglow you get after a swim in the West Coast of Ireland during the winter months. It was a challenge to my mind and body to get into the cold water, particularly on the windier days, however this challenge also brought a sense of being alive and free. After every swim I felt like I could achieve anything! During these weeks the ocean was a true healer.
After two weeks in a slump, I finally felt that the fog has started to lift up, and I could start to think about the next challenge, a new goal to work towards to. But then the knee pain came all flooding back. With the highs and the lows, it had skipped my mind to follow up with a physiotherapist appointment for the knee pain I felt during the Athens Marathon. Therefore the first thing on my agenda after the two weeks in the mind fog was to go and see my physiotherapist.
To wind back a bit, my right knee and I go way back, but it was only in 2016 during my yoga teacher training in Dharamshala, India, when my knee got really bad. I discovered that after a fall on a rock, when I was a kid (I still have a scar), my knee was hurt a lot more and never fully healed. However, I never had an issue with it, that is until an intensive yoga training and walking up and down the mountain paths from McLeod Ganj to Upper Dharamkot. There I went to The Bone and Body clinic in Dharamshala, where my knee was closely examined for the first time, and it was once again aligned, and I was prescribed plenty of exercises to work with, and no running.
Two years later after Dharamshala, and the pain was back, however, this time after the marathon it felt different. It also started to interrupt my night’s rest, and made it almost impossible to sit in any way, unless my legs were straight. I knew, that my knee was not good. So I went to see a physiotherapist, and she was amazing. With various exercises that she recommended I immediately started to work on areas in my body that were not firing up, areas that were overworked, and everything in between, to establish a better balance within my body.
Dedication and patience I think is the key during the physiotherapy, and I had plenty of both, as I was looking forward to runs with no knee pain. My last run in 2018 was on December 11, and my first run in 2019 was January 16. It was then, with no running in sight, that I set a goal to run my second marathon that spring.
By the end of January, my knee flared up once again. I went for a check up with my physiotherapist and visited an osteopath, as I was working with an osteopath in Dharamshala. I didn’t run for the whole month of February, 2019, as I was advised. Yet during these weeks with no running I signed up for the Connemara Marathon on April 14, 2019. In my mind I was already drawing up a blueprint for Run to Plant Trees initiative; to run further and to run more.
My first training run for the Connemara Marathon was on March 3, 2019, and it was exactly 1 km long. It was 6 weeks before the race. My next run was on March 4 - 1,5 km long, then March 6 I ran 2 km, on March 8 - 3 km, March 10 - 5 km. I was building distance slowly and steadily, as advised. And I knew that my core value for the training and future running is to have an injury free body, thus the short distances didn’t seem like going back, instead I was laying a new foundation for my running practice. The longest distance that I ran before my second marathon was 26,5 km on April 7, 2019, exactly a week before the race day. And it was enough, as my mind already knew that I can ran 42,195 km, so I just needed to build the muscle strength. A strong and resilient mind is essential during these long races, if your mind isn’t in it, then it doesn’t matter how strong your body is. I signed up for the Connemara Marathon mentally ready, but being also very aware that my knee might not allow me to finish the race, and that was fine by me. I needed a goal to work towards to, I needed a goal towards which I could steer my dedication.
Two weeks before the Connemara Marathon, on April 1, I pitched the idea of the Run to Plant Trees initiative to my partner. Run to Plant Trees would start with the Connemara Marathon, April 14, 2019, and conclude with the Connemara Ultra Marathon - 64 km race - a year later. The lack of running inspired me to set goals for running further and more. So there and then I set a goal to run three marathons, two half marathons and one ultra marathon within a year, and to raise funds to plant native and indigenous trees with Hometree Charity, a charity whose values and ideas align with my own. It was exciting, and once I said it out loud it was also getting real! So I went for it. I set my goal.