What You Didn't Miss: January

Running Life: A Fitness Protection Production

Haven't run this month? MAKES SENSE TO US!

Right now, it’s JANUARY, and you know what, January is a tough time for a lot of us. There is a whole lot of pressure to adopt new fitness habits this time of year, so much so that Strava has coined the term “quitter’s day” - that was January 19th - the day when most people, according to their data, quit their new year’s resolutions. "Stick to your goalsI" they say, and we say, eh. If you quit something, there’s a reason. You didn’t need to be doing that in the first place. If we were contractually obligated to stick with every single new thing we tried FOREVER lest we be shamed, would we ever try new things?

The other day, someone said to me (Coach Sarah) that “your job must CONSTANTLY keep you like in the best shape of your life, right?” Probably what I should have said was “yeah, it’s awesome!” but I didn’t think the person asking was looking to be humored, so instead I gave the true answer, which was this: “actually, one of the things I try to teach people in my job is that being in the best shape of your life is extremely overrated, and in fact, if that’s your benchmark, you’re putting yourself in an unsustainable situation.”

I think that what this job does do is reassure me that, indeed, I WON’T always be in the best shape of my life, and that that’s okay. I am NEVER obligated to be. What it does for me is create a framework where even if I miss a week or a month or six months, there’s a place for me to jump back in and start again. I will not have missed anything.

If you’re not running right now, it’s cool and it doesn’t matter why or whose fault it is. You're not lazy and you deserve validation, not shame. This podcast series is for the runners who are running one day, then they all of a sudden look at their Training Peaks for a given month and realize that most of the boxes are red. You don’t need to explain or justify it to us. The point is that when you’re ready to start again, we’re ready for you.

If you’ve recently missed a week of running, two weeks, three weeks, three MONTHS, please write to us. We want to have you on the podcast for the February edition and we want you to tell us what you DID get to do when you weren’t running, and we want to assure you that you didn’t miss anything, and we want you to help us reassure the COUNTLESS other runners who aren’t running right now that they’re not missing anything either. Email [e-mail] and we’ll set it up.