Many of you have recently completed some pretty amazing objectives, from single to multiple marathons, representing GB at world championships to numerous personal challenges.
The party’s over so what happens now?
The daily routine maybe tapers off, the motivation drops and the single focus you have had for so long is no longer there.
Here’s some advice.
- The ebb and flow is part of the sport – It’s completely normal to feel something different in this period. It’s healthy to have this variability. It allows you to peak and then to rest and recover more fully. To be always “on” can lead to feelings of burnout or compromising other elements of your life. Although training should be sustainable it’s very often in the final stages of a major event that it takes a greater share of focus. This is a positive period to allow that intensity to rebalance. Re-invest in relationships is of particular important just now.
- Use the fitness you have built – You may well be in amazing physical condition. Feel free to use this. Be gentle and have the activity or new goals held softly but its often a positive to leverage the fitness. Do something fun, maybe a new type of challenge. Be light on expectations. After a week or two possibly drop an event into diaries for about 4-6 weeks away. Make the event way easier in contrast to the event recently completed. For example a 10km if you have recently ran a marathon. You may well find the longer duration fitness will allow you to complete the shorter distance remarkably quickly.
- Keep a routine – Possibly you had a pretty intensive routine of training. Whilst you should be careful about the specifics a good rule of thumb is to keep at least 50% of your frequency of activity, often higher. However, feel free to swap out the actual discipline. So for example if you were running 6 times a week. Try to keep in at least 3 sessions of activity but feel free to swap out for a long walk or a swim or bike. Maybe do with others now that the schedule and pace is more flexible. Or swap out the activity for volunteering – so if that track sessions feels all a bit much, pop along and offer to help with set-up or timings etc. Be careful to maintain the connections you have made.
- Reflection – Think about the wider process rather than look back over only the event – often other people and maybe yourself will have a strong focus on the event completed. People are more likely to ask you about the event. Maybe you have a medal or a position or time that you proudly share. Whilst this is very memorable, take the time to reflect on the wider experience. Those long solo winter runs, the “firsts” of covering distances or paces, the highs and lows of the whole process. Be careful these are not overtaken by a focus on the single event at the end. You can use some of this reflection to help shape the future. Maybe even cast your mind back all the way to when you decided to take on the challenge. Is there something there that could help shape the next?
- Go deep on the emotional strength you discovered – for any significant personal challenge there is likely to have been one or more quite emotional moments. Perhaps a time when you lost self-belief and yet somehow you kept going. A set-back or injury but you found a way or a recalibration of success. May be a relationship or a memory you used to push on through the tough times. There is something magical about the stripping away of the day to day and finding the place where this emotion lies. It can be a hugely powerful emotion. There are no laws of physics that can explain these, no gadget or wearable that can measure them, no commercial company that can market this to you. You found these on your own, through your hard work and dedication to take yourself to a place where the noise was quietened and the you could hear and feel this within you. Take note of this special discovery and hold onto it. You’ve worked hard to find it.
So to move forward, find your own balance. Enough time to absorb the whole process, but take the experiences and use them as growth and knowledge for your next opportunity and allow the process to rebuild once more.
Image: The image of the dried flowers is to capture the sense that there was something amazing that was once present, it can be remembered but also another season with new fresh challenges awaits.