Strava Hiatus

I love Strava!  I'm inspired by seeing other runners' training, I like the ways in which it allows me to analyze my own training, I enjoy watching my friends kill their races and workouts, and I love interacting with other runners.  I'm pretty addicted to posting my runs and watching my weekly mileage build, and I'm also not sure how I managed before grade-adjusted pace.  However, like all social media platforms, pieces of it can become problematic during certain seasons of our lives.

My running hasn't been fantastic in 2018.  I've been inconsistent, hot and cold, and just haven't seen the results from my training like I did during previous cycles (more details on this are here, here, and here - plus it's no secret that I bombed the Houston Marathon).  I'm not running terribly, and it's an odd paradigm because my current bad runs/races are better than I was doing in 2016 and before, so I feel somewhat greedy/guilty calling it a bad phase.  But I'm not running as well as I was in 2017, and I've been getting really discouraged about it.  After all, for my big goal I need to knock 144 seconds off of my marathon PR, and I seem to be going in the opposite direction.  I am probably being overly dramatic about it, but I feel like I am getting slower every week!  During my CIM cycle, I felt stronger every week and like the workouts and long runs were building, but during this build I haven't felt like that's happening...I'm just hoping to make it through each week!

I try to not let comparison steal my joy, but I fail at this often, particularly when comparing my own performances.  This season as I've seen my runs not measure up to what I was doing when building for CIM, I've been getting very down on myself.  My CIM build wasn't enough to get me the 2:45:00, so a build with almost everything being slower surely isn't going to be enough.  My body isn't responding to training in the same way, and I'm having a difficult time staying positive about this training cycle.  Currently, I really enjoy the process of running every day, but not the numbers (paces, splits, etc.).  I used to salivate for my hard workout days, and now I'm instead terrified I won't be able to hit my paces.  Some days I don't even look at my splits during or after the run, which 2017 Sara would have thought unfathomable!

After a conversation with my coach, I realized that Strava might be making me more negative about my recent training.  I'm looking at my own matched runs, my previous workouts, and my previous mileage and getting down on myself.  I also look at what other women who are chasing or have recently achieved the 2:45 standard are doing, and I always feel like I'm running way less mileage far slower than all of them (I felt this way before CIM too, but at that point I was running workout PRs and mileage PRs often, so I felt like I was on my way to a higher level and didn't feel discouraged).  It is also easy to compare relatively to everyone, for example seeing others' speed work be X amount faster than their races paces, or seeing others run long runs closer to marathon pace than I do (let me also note that I am flummoxed when people run all of their long runs at their goal marathon pace - I could never hit that week after week!).  Although I still see many positives from Strava, at the current time I don't think it's helping my slump.  So today was my last upload, and as of 3/26/18, Strava and I are on a break.  I don't think this is a complete solution to my 2018 issues, but I think it's worth a try and I am pretty open to trying anything that could help even slightly.  I'll definitely be back to Strava, and I'll definitely still be training!

Well, I'm not un-linking my Strava & Garmin accounts, so my runs will
still automatically upload to Strava (they will be private though), so it
still all happened, haha!