Run at your own pace

I went for my usual Monday long run this morning. At one point, I overtook another runner (not because I ran faster, let’s just say that I took more risk at the traffic light than he did) and the competitive side of me was pretty happy about it. Barely a few minutes later, not only did he was about to catch up, but he also managed to leave me far behind. Needless to say, I was feeling upset and started comparing my pace with his etc.

As I was doing it, I realized that I forgot an important lesson that I wrote a long time ago about comparison, that we will certainly never win when we compare with others and that feeling is quite awful to say the least. The only person that we should compare with is ourselves. This realisation really helped lifting my mood and so I went on with my run at my own pace, not anyone else’s.

However, I remembered a conversation with a friend yesterday on this topic. We talked about how we should only compare with ourselves, except when we are perfectionists. In this case, we will always fall short of our own expectations and I would argue that this feeling is equally bad as the feeling of losing to someone else.

So my friends, using the metaphor of running (you can replace running with literally everything), just run at your own pace, whatever that pace is, the most important thing is that you run.

Don’t get me wrong. I do want to run longer and faster and this will take time. I give myself full permission and compassion to take as much time as I need to do that. Life is marathon, not a sprint, after all, right?

Enjoy running at your own pace everyone!