I need to run today. More explicitly I need to run 10 miles, a distance I haven’t covered in over 6 months. It’s a little daunting but I’ve a made a plan (shocker!). The first part of the plan was deciding on the route. That may seem obvious, but these days thanks to activity trackers, you can simply set off and keep running until you’ve reached half your intended distance. However it’s too easy on an ‘out and back’ route to turn back early so I like to plan out specific circular routes that meet the distance.
I use Strava as my activity tracker and have been a premium user for a couple of years. It has a great tool for plotting routes (although it’s only really usable on a PC or tablet.) – once created you can download the route to the mobile app and use it to check you’re location as you go. It would be better if it offered turn by turn navigation like google maps but alas that’s not a current feature.
Anyway I digress…
The importance for me of setting a specific route is that once it’s in my head I can visualise it; having that in the back of my mind is a great motivator to completing the course even when the going gets tough. I will always know what the plan was and while there will be points where I can take shortcuts, they will be just that, shortcuts, so there is a disincentive from taking them unless I actually pick up an injury along the way.
The visualisation is the key and it’s something I was introduced to as an idea during a training course at work. The more you imagine the detail of your end result the more likely you are to achieve it.
So I’m off to hit the road now. If you want to read more about visualisation you could start with this Huffington Post post.
Imagine what you could achieve tomorrow.
Donovan.