A client of mine recently tallied up the minutes she spends on all the “extra stuff” she does to support her running - strength, PT, warm ups and cool downs, rolling out and stretching at other times of day, yoga, etc - and she compared this to the number of minutes she spends actually running.

I wanted to see how these numbers compared for me, and on average I spend about 3 1/2 hours each week on the “extra stuff” and a little over 4 hours running.

For both of us, it takes almost equal amounts of the extra stuff to support our running. One way to see this, and frankly my default view on this, is: It’s so frustrating that I can't just run! Why do I have to do all this other stuff?! It didn’t used to be this hard.

Another viewpoint I could try, the more positive one, is: I do all this stuff so I get to run. How cool that these funky little warm up drills and me doing squats in my living room allows me to run.

A third viewpoint, what I’ll call the neutral one, is This is how it is. It doesn’t need to be a drag or to be exciting, this is just how running works.

When I’m looking at something I feel negatively about, it often feels phony and unattainable to just Have a good attitude! Look on the bright side! That’s when I like to try out a neutral view, because not everything has to feel good or be something I really love doing. Some things just are.

If I didn’t do all the extra stuff like my PT, I could probably run more with all the extra time I’d have, but I know that would only last so long before I would get injured. Compared to an injury, a few extra miles this week does not sound even mildly desirable. I mean really, how much of my time do I need to spend running anyways?

- Caitlin

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