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Confession: I have a hard time talking to people about running

Have a hard time talking to others about running? It can be hard to find the balance between talking too much (and sounding like you're bragging) and not sharing enough at all.

Exhausted runner

It’s really hard to talk to people about running.

One night last week for example, I had a workout with a two-kilometres warm-up and cool-down with 24 minutes in between ranging from a 4:05 pace to a 4:15 pace with no rest. Heading into it, I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to meet my paces. It was one of those time when I just dreaded the workout in general. The problem? I don’t really have anyone to talk to about these kinds of negative pre-workout feelings.

When you’re training, there’s a delicate balance in managing how much you discuss your workouts with friends and family. It’s annoying. No one wants to hear anyone blab on about your workouts any more than your new intolerance to dairy, the delay you had on your morning commute, or what you dreamed about last night.

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I have a lot of hobbies. I knit, read, cook, nerd out about craft beer… but as my training has increased, I don’t do any of those activities for as many hours as I run each week. It’s hard to spend so much of your time doing one activity only to feel like you can’t talk about it.

No one has outright told me not to talk about running. I usually try not to talk about it actually. When I was at a friend’s birthday recently I wasn’t drinking much and aimed to leave earlier than most guests as I had a 20K run planned for the next morning. I wasn’t going to talk about it, but my husband brought it up to a friend as he was proud of me. I immediately shrugged it off and I asked that we not talk about it. I was thinking about this interaction the next day and realized how odd it was. I should be proud of my hard work. I should be happy to take the opportunity to talk with friends about my hobbies. Instead, I felt like it would be bragging about my fitness.

Being able to discuss training, go over paces, and talk about your next race is clearly one of the reasons runners function well in groups. Sure, our partners will patiently listen to us when we debrief our latest training session, but other runners can relate to the struggle of hitting your pace. They can share their own story about how they got a DNF in their last marathon. Even within our runner groups, it can be hard to discuss training. Someone slower might not be able to relate whereas someone faster may not understand my concern about pacing and say something like “4:30 per kilometre? You can hit that! That’s no problem.”

Regardless of where you’re at in your training, it’s cathartic to talk about it with other people and even better if they’re going through similar struggles on their own. The lesson I’ve tried to take away from this is to focus on your own training and your own paces. There will always be people faster or slower. What helps is sharing your stories over coffee.

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