It‘s worth ignoring everything you know sometimes
Some time back I stumbled on an excerpt from a book called ‘Living with a Navy Seal’ by Jesse Itzler. Story goes, Jesse gave an ex Navy Seal control over his exercise program. On day 1 they did pull-ups.
Jesse managed 15 before giving up. The trainer was like “That’s cool, now do another hundred!”. Committed to the experiment, he did another, then another… and eventually did 115 pull ups on his first day. Jesse’s insight was that we are always at risk of under estimating ourselves, in all things, but particularly in physical endeavour.
A 5 year stint in the high school rowing club had on occasion required moments of endurance over and above what I thought possible, and so the story struck a chord.
With those thoughts lurking in the back of my mind, I became curious when my running watch recently predicted I could run a 5k in less than 20 minutes. Garmin watches have a ‘race predictor’ function, using data collected from your weekly runs.
Until that point, I was only managing around 23:30 for 5k races. That’s 4:45/km. For non-runners reading this, shaving 3 minutes off your time might sound straightforward. However in this case it meant a 15% improvement on my best previous effort, or 45 seconds per kilometre.
I have run a sub 20. In high school. Maybe 2 or 3 times. I am now 32, working a full time job, married with kids. I don’t spend 3 afternoons + Saturday morning racking up mileage on the river, or running with the cross country team. It seemed a little far fetched to think I could match a lifetime best now, well into my 30s.
However, I had an itch that needed scratching and nothing to lose. Two weeks later I arrived ready to race at the pre-eminent 5k running challenge… the Rondebosch Park Run.
My race strategy was: try and run the first kilometre at the suggested 4:00/km pace. Then see if I can hang on for another kilometer. Then another, then another, and another. It burnt like hell but I ran 20:16.
That’s 4:04/km. Which is 40 seconds a kilometer faster, every kilometer.
I have no idea how the Garmin race predictor works. However as I considered the legitimacy of the prediction leading up to the race, I couldn’t deny that Garmin knows things about me that I don’t.
It knows my heart rate at a certain speed. It also has a huge data set of 32 year old men to factor into its calculations. More importantly, it knows objectively how I am doing, and is not biased by years of personal experience, failure or mediocre expectations.
[Garmin] knows objectively how I am doing, and is not biased by years of … mediocre expectations.
The hopefully obvious take-home point here is: don’t be too quick to write off outside, optimistic expectations of your ability. On the road, and in life.
I think we set expectations of ourselves based on the outcomes of passed efforts. However that approach discounts how we may have developed and improved since then.
In the last few weeks I have smashed every personal running record I have set in the last decade. And while I haven’t run a sub-20 5k yet, I won’t be surprised when I do.
