Father's Day Coffee and Chat

Sunday, June 21, 2015 · Mike Davis

Good morning! Not the nicest of days to be celebrating our Fathers but let the celebrating commence never the less! I am blessed today to have my daughter Jennifer coming to spend a good part of the day with me. Rain or shine spending time with Jennifer is a wonderful gift. Many of you know Jennifer and understand why I appreciate her so much. Truly a special young lady that brings sunshine on days that are filled with rain. Last week was my best week for running in some time as I had four runs with each being at least 4 miles. Very encouraging as well as needed from just a physical standpoint. Not so great on strength training as it seemed that I was meeting friends just about every morning before work thus keeping me from a morning strength training opportunity. I am doing push-ups every day and am up to 60. While I am not thrilled that my strength training is where I would like it, I am happy overall with my conditioning. I have talked about perfect weeks and always striving for those, but I have learned that falling short of perfection is only a failure if I give up. Life is definitely a journey that is filled with failures and hopefully successes. Understanding that failing is not something easy to experience or endure but if utilized correctly can contribute to our ultimate development far better than our successes. When working with runners I have no doubt that they want to have success every time they lace up their running shoes. Whether it is a great race where they PR or even if it is just a daily run where they feel great as they move through the run. Something less on both accounts often leads to questioning ability, conditioning, preparation or even if they enjoy running. I most certainly have experienced all of those emotions after (and sometimes during) a race or even just a run for fun. While I may not consciously evaluate every run as a means to get something out of it, I try to use past not so good runs to push me through a tough run. I will at times compare things that are contributing factors such as: hydration, nutrition, rest, pacing or even overall mindset. Those are all useful and important factors that can be used to improve my running and establish consistent habits. As a running coach it is important for me to have all of that information from our runners as well because a bad run is an opportunity to learn something. When we designed our online running log for our runners we determined what type of information would be useful for us to analyze their progress. Knowing if they ate and what before a run and comparing it with how they rated their run often gives a clear picture of what they should be doing as far as nutrition moving forward. Did they foam roll after their run and how their legs felt during the early stages of their next run tells us something. On and on it goes and thankfully we continue to develop our online log so we can collect information and use bad runs and even runs that are considered failures as a way to improve overall. The other and perhaps more valuable positive that can come out of falling short or failing is our own personal growth. Society seems to celebrate success or winning as all that matters and failure tends to have a stigma that means we are bad or did something wrong. Striving for ultimate success is great and I definitely believe that we can become better by doing that. However, falling short by a narrow or even a large margin has no bearing on who I am but instead how I handle it is going to define who I will ultimately be. Each time I lace up my shoes and run I want my run to be better than my last but in reality the clock should not determine my success. While that sounds philosophically right, we often struggle with letting those around us determine our success. No Finish Line Running was founded on helping runners of all types find a deeper level for which to measure their success by and times that can be challenging for our runners. Often when writing a personal running plan we intentionally slow our runners down with the goal of developing greater discipline in their running as well as preparing them properly. This is a struggle for many of our runners and can become a downright battle between running coach and runner. Again society’s pressure plays a role whether it be the typical “what was your finish time?” or even seeing people running faster out during a casual run. We succumb to wanting to be successful more than being smart or even happy some times. This past week I was not as successful as I might like to have been as I did little to work on my strength and that doesn’t sit well. However I did run 4 times and that gives me a great deal of encouragement. This week will be challenging because of traveling later but I will try to figure out what were my challenges last week and use them to improve on this week. I also need to start thinking toward September when Reach the Beach rolls around and what kind of mileage I need to be at? Running four times last week is great but I need to start progressing with my distance as well so using last week’s experience to build on this week should help as well. It’s all about taking the ups and downs and growing from them. Time to get a moving. Happy first day of summer and to all you fathers I wish you a “Happy Father’s Day!” God Bless! Mike