For such a simple sport, it’s surprising how many different things can impact on your running performance and unfortunately a lot of those variables are completely out of your control. I take great solace in the fact that even the best runners in the world have bad days at the office – even Paula Radcliffe, in my opinion the greatest marathon runner of all time, had the odd shocker!
So once you’ve accepted that it’s not only OK but also inevitable that you will have the odd bad run, what can you do about it? A single bad race or training run could be down to a number of issues.
- Analyse. Take a moment to look back at your build-up and see if you can pinpoint where it went wrong. Perhaps you hadn’t left enough time since your last hard training run, maybe your nutrition and hydration was off, or perhaps it was more of a mental issue with your focus and attention being elsewhere on the day.
- Learn. If you are able to identify the issue, make sure you learn from it, ensuring you don’t make the same mistake again. However, the key is also to not mull over it for too long.
- Accept. If you find it hard to identify the problem, then there probably wasn’t one. Unfortunately, the human body is a complex beast and sometimes we simply have bad days. Accept it and move on.
- Re-think. What is important, though, is when the “one bad run” becomes a little too frequent to put down to bad luck. If you are jumping from one disappointment to another, it’s time to step back from your training and seek advice as to what’s going on.
