Taking your running journey onto social media can be a great deal of fun but there are pitfalls in comparing yourself with others' edited showreels, writes Leo Spall.
“I can’t do that because it would look crap on Strava,” a friend said to me at the track the other day during an intervals session.
We were bemoaning our inability to find a good Garmin stopwatch app that recorded our split times and he was aghast at my workaround of simply including my recovery sections as laps, presumably because it would have radically lowered my average pace.
It got me thinking about why we run and for whom – and how his approach made so little sense.
Now, don’t shoot me down as a dinosaur, but I’m one of those increasingly rare runners who doesn’t post their stats on Strava, Instagram or any other social network.
I keep a log of my training runs and include lots of information my watch can’t – like my perceived rate of exertion, and progress with any biomechanical or breathing changes I’m trying to make.
Also recorded are factors that I felt may have affected me, such as tiredness, mindset, work issues, and I take a note of parts of my body that may be giving me early warning signals of injury.
The reason I do all this is so that I can see where I’m at in my training, if there are tweaks I should make or preventative action I need to take. If I want to speak to a physio or another coach about anything, I’ve got some good background for them.
The point of telling you how I approach my training is to emphasise that I see my running information as a way of measuring myself against myself. I’m trying to get the most I possibly can out of myself and that is motivation enough for me.
Everybody is different. You might love the competitive or social elements of Strava, or just seeing the great pictures that people take. The popularity of the various social channels runners use overwhelmingly suggests that they have a lot of value for a lot of people.
There are certainly tips, pointers and interesting things out there that can add to your running experience.
But there could also be problems from a training perspective if you race all your runs just to keep up with others in your virtual network; there can be confidence and motivation issues, too, if you are always comparing your times with others you know very little else about.
People can feel more comfortable being cruel in public forums as well. Early on in my running life I was told in a forum that I’d go faster if I lost a bit of weight; I thought I was fitter and slimmer than I’d been for a few years and while my ‘advisor’ may have been right, it certainly didn’t make me feel a confident part of that particular marathon-running community.
Similar comments, thankfully, seem to be less common in running spheres, or they do in the social media spaces I frequent at least.
But a lack of likes or kudos could have the same impact on some people, and too many could lead to unrealistic expectations and nasty disappointment. Competition can be a double-edged sword too, taking you on an exhausting and potentially injury-inducing rollercoaster ride.
We are all on our own unique running journeys, and there are myriad mental, environmental, social, physical and other factors in play. By all means try to beat Joe or Joanna in your local parkrun if that spurs you on, but don’t lose sight of everything else running is giving you.
What is important, however much or little you engage with social media, is that you remember why you are running – and for whom.
If you want any sort of advice on your running journey, we can help with regular training planning and guidance. Happy running!
Kommentare