Comparison & Fixation: How To Keep Running Fun & Healthy

If you’ve read anything I’ve shared this year, you know I hit training fatigue earlier this year after a big effort and personal PR. I stopped enjoying running but continued digging myself into a hole, training and not listening to my body. I also faced many conversations in my head: “you have to just keep going because everyone else can do that”. This isn’t the first time I’ve faced that nasty nemesis: comparison.

I’m human. I’d be lying if I said I never ever compared myself to other women and other runners. It’s a tough practice to step away from and no matter how far you get in your self love journey, I believe it will still come up from time to time. I’ve compared how I look or don’t look, my pace, my distances, my PR’s, my adventure runs, my off days, my cross training, my endurance, my heart rate…you name it, it can be compared.

What I can say is this: none of that comparative moments have made me feel empowered, stronger, happier and more fulfilled. All of the things I strive to do and gain for myself while being out on the trails and in nature get stripped away the moment I have begun to compare my efforts or abilities to someone else’s. This year I had to swallow my pride and accept where I have been at. This has been a tough year emotionally and physically and instead of trying to go balls to the wall all the time, I’ve given myself grace to not always have the best runs or as many PB’s or as many weekly miles. I shifted my focus to celebrate simply moving, staying healthy and doing what I can in the moment.

I had to allow myself to take more rest, not focus on how much or how many miles other people were logging or struggling with the idea that if I took some time off, I’d somehow lose all my fitness and my identity as a runner. I had to allow myself to be all the rest of things I am outside of just….a runner and remove the comparative voice in my head that flirted with calling that “failure”. Being multi-faceted isn’t a failure. Going through phases of feeling motivated and then not, is also not failure. It’s being human.

There will always be someone faster, further along in their process, stronger on the uphills, or the downhills, or the flats. If we tack our worth or happiness onto these benchmarks we will never feel good or fulfilled. Instead I want to focus on how I feel when I’m out there and when I finish, who I get to share it all with and if I feel satisfied personally. If you want to play the long game of being a trail runner and getting better, you’ve got to put in the work over time, not seeking immediate results.

A prime example is how I struggled with comparing myself to those who have been in this sport for years longer than I have or have been running since they were much, much younger. Their bases are more adapted, they are truly more gifted and stronger runners and that’s okay because they are way further along in their process than I am. When I started listing off my own accomplishments and growth over the past two years of trail running, I started to feel pride in how far I’ve come…for myself. My achievements are just that, my own, and those are good enough. Better than good enough.

We can’t force ourselves to be further along than we are. We can’t make our bodies more ready than they are able to be. We have to embrace our own adventure because each of ours looks differently. When I’ve been able to embrace that, I have been able to celebrate not only myself but so many others because other people’s achievements don’t take away from my own.

There are endless ways we can put pressure on ourselves and there are many measurable ways to put those pressures on ourselves in the running arena. We can quantifiably be hard on ourselves but what good comes from beating ourselves up about our pace or our distance or what we “should be able to do” or “need to do better”…what truly matters is what we gain and feel while we’re out there for our personal gain. We’d all be a lot better off if we spoke to ourselves the way we do to our best friends who are training and going after their goals. Speak to yourself like your best friend training for her next big achievement…whatever that is! Be proud. Be bold. Stay healthy.