RUNNING IN CIRCLES
If at first you don’t succeed, run, run again. So says Lizzy Dening. Not exactly a ‘natural’ runner, she keeps on pounding the pavement anyway, mile after painful mile. This is her story – it’s basically everything you ever needed to know about perseveran
What keeps you going when you’re making no progress?
Anyone who knows me will take great pleasure in telling you I give up at the first whiff of failure. Mention ‘flute lessons’ to my parents and they’ll chew your ear off about the many elaborate bribery tactics they deployed to entice me to continue my classes (they failed); the process of learning to ride my bike resulted in said cycle looking slightly the worse for wear after all the hours I spent kicking its frame out of abject frustration; and now if there’s something that looks even remotely challenging (building a Billy bookcase, mastering eyeliner wings or getting my head round Snapchat), I just don’t bother. ‘Let’s hire someone,’ is my mantra for everything from hanging a curtain rail to doing a spot of housework. But – and it baffles me – there’s one thing in my life that I’m terrible at yet am determined to stick with: running. My times may be slow and my cheeks puce, but my Runtastic app will attest to the fact that I’ve been very slowly racking up the miles pretty consistently for months. I’m as shocked as anyone to find myself spending hours in sports shops talking about ‘fuelling ’ or ‘an easy eight-miler’. And when I see my laundry basket yet again full of sports bras, I can’t help but feel a little smug about it. Smug and surprised. Make no mistake, this is not a tortoise and hare story. Spoiler alert: you won’t get to the end and find me beaming and holding up a winner’s trophy. No, this is actually a story about what I’ve learned from sucking at running and how I’ve stayed motivated despite being, you know, terrible at it. And if it inspires you to take up a sport that you enjoy even though you don’t excel at it? Well, that’d just be a nice little bonus.
‘THE URGE SEIZED ME FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN THE JOY OF MOVING AROUND OUTSIDE’
STEP TO IT
Before April 2015, the most running I’d ever done was the occasional joyless 30-minute yomp around the local neighbourhood, my sole intention being to burn off fat (and big lunches). Every laboured stride was a chore. A bore. A punishment. I’m not sure what changed, but that April, I was stuck in traffic on the first sunny evening we’d had that year and I was feeling restless after a dreary day al desko. I wanted to leap out of the car, shake off the office and dash through the sunshine – to feel my heart pumping from something other than stress. As soon as I got home, I laced up my totally inappropriate gym trainers and raced out of the door for an hour of speedy running. Okay, it was more like alternating sets of three-minute jogs and 10-minute bouts of retching, but still the urge had seized me – and for no other reason than the joy of moving around outside. I enjoyed it so much (despite the retching and panting) that I decided to do it again. Then again. And again. Tentatively, I stuck at it, inhaling bugs and praying I wouldn’t see anyone I knew (luckily, I never did). I came to love the feeling of tight muscles in the morning – they were proof my efforts were worthwhile. I downloaded the Runtastic app to see if there was any chance in sweatdrenched hell I might reach 5k without stopping. One evening, after three weeks and about eight runs, as the sun set above the park where I was running, I did. I came home that night feeling invincible. I was a runner.
POWERFUL SUPPORT
Looking back, I think a large part of my new enthusiasm was down to family and friends. My fiancé would remind me how far I’d come when I wanted to shirk the gym, and would meet me with a water bottle when I thought I was going to pass out after a race. My mum, two months after that first run, when I started to do races, stood on the sidelines in the freezing cold, waiting, as faster runners whizzed by, for me to shuffle into view. My friends and colleagues would sponsor my 10k runs and make appreciative coos over the medals I showed off after. This alchemy of external encouragement and self-motivation is the central concept of Self Determination Theory (SDT). ‘People are inclined towards certain sports through a natural interest,’ says psychologist Dr Gordon Spence. ‘But their pursuance of that sport will be determined by what sort of social support they get for it.’ Indeed, researchers* confirm that encouragement makes all the difference, finding social support to be linked with improved performance in 100% of cases. This support can even keep you injury-free*.
THE TOUGH GET GOING
As demonstrated by my flute failures, encouragement alone isn’t enough to keep you going – it’s up to you to cultivate your own enthusiasm for a sport or hobby. ‘SDT predicts that people will try harder, persist for longer and feel better about sporting outcomes when they have initiated them themselves and not felt coerced or forced into them by others,’ says Dr Spence. My enthusiasm was based on testing how far I could push myself – could I join a running club and try to keep up with the others? Could I complete two half marathons within a fortnight of each other, even though I still found a 10k taxing? (Answer to both: yes. But it hurt.) It’s just possible that my new-found obsession with barely achievable challenges was a sign of my ‘mental toughness’, a theory, researchers believe, with links to SDT. Mental toughness is essentially a measure of your resilience and persistence – and as my dogged pursuit of medals and PBS showed, there’s a strong chance I had more of it than I might have realised before I started running. There are various components to mental toughness (around 20 according to a 2005 study from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, US), some of which can be taught or improved upon (being physically strong or having a will to succeed, for example), while some are more likely to be innate parts of your personality (thriving on the pressure of competition or being able to quickly bounce back from performance setbacks). I’m not sure that I demonstrate all of them but certain characteristics ring a bell: I’m stubborn and passionate, and I don’t let difficult races and lousy times bring me down – much. Psychologist Peter Clough defines mental toughness as being ‘made up of confidence, seeing challenge as an opportunity and having commitment and a belief that you control your destiny’. It’s about developing yourself as a person and not worrying what other people are doing, but asking: ‘Am I doing my best?’ According to Clough, the highest performers in all fields have mental toughness – indeed, it’s been shown that many coaches consider it the most important attribute in achieving sporting success. So perhaps sticking with something you suck at isn’t masochism, but an indicator of resilience.
PUTTING IN THE LEGWORK
As I began training for two half marathons last autumn, a year after my jogging debut, I assumed I’d naturally get faster over time (I’d been concentrating on increasing distance up to this point). I diligently built myself a training plan, with speed work, hills, long runs and cross training, and I hauled myself out of bed for 5.45am gym sessions with dedication (and only minor resentment). But as the weeks rolled by, it became clear that I was never going to finish with a time I’d want engraved on my medal. This lack of progress bothered me – especially the thought that a half marathon was going to involve three hours of watching my naturally speedy run club friends disappear into the distance – but, strangely, never enough to stop me lacing up my trainers and ticking off those planned sessions. The idea of ‘grit’ in psychology explores why it’s not necessarily the naturally talented who see things through. It gained traction in a TED talk by psychologist Dr Angela Lee Duckworth, who became interested in motivation when she was teaching maths. She realised that often it wasn’t the children with the highest IQS who had the best results, but those with a combination of passion and perseverance. Think: the old adage (and an apt one for me) that life is a marathon, not a sprint. ‘Talent doesn’t make you gritty,’ says Dr Duckworth, who has spent more than 10 years studying the relationship between grit and achievement in school kids, students and members of the military. ‘The data shows there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.’ In terms of running, I definitely wasn’t talented by any stretch of the imagination. Could it really be that my lack of natural skill, which told me I couldn’t afford to miss any of my training sessions, worked in my favour, making me more determined? My grit certainly helped me finish both half marathons with a smile on my face – plus I still earned the exact same medals as the sporty girls (albeit about an hour later and with a lot more sweat).
STICKING WITH IT
So is it grit and mental toughness that keep me coming back for more? Perhaps. But my greatest motivator is the way running has changed my perception of myself. Turns out, my life doesn’t need to be limited to the things I’m good at. If I can stick with something I find hard, it might mean there are all sorts of challenges I could be pursuing – I could learn Spanish, body locking, jazz piano… or at the very least, how to use Snapchat. ‘The advantages in education and work seem clear,’ says Clough. ‘Mentally tough people will often do better and, as they’re not typically overwhelmed by pressure, they appear happier and have better mental health.’ A 2015 study backs this up, demonstrating a link between mental toughness and psychological wellbeing, as well as academic performance. My favourite mantra for uphill climbs is: ‘Pain is temporary, pride lasts a lifetime’. And nothing makes you feel better about yourself than achieving something against the odds. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it possible to ‘enjoy’ a run, any more than you might ‘enjoy’ a colonoscopy, but it’s true. Slow and steady won’t win the race, but it might just make you the most determined one on the track.