Hello, Soft Run friends. I hope you had a week of soft running, treating your body kindly, and keep your mind and soul well fed.
The boring, quiet, “just get out the door” runs are what makes it possible to keep running consistently. By themselves they’re not glamorous, but when you have a hundred of them (of anything), you’ll see you’re building something.
The fun part? The reward isn’t always a win. Or a new personal best. Or even a solid run. Some days you got it, some days you don’t.
I’ve been meeting up with my BFF recently to get in some easy bike rides (see photo at the top). My fried will admit they’re not very active, so I’ve been fun finding flat, easy trails to explore, while creeping up in mileage each time we go out.
Part of the secret sauce is this; you have to like it enough to keep doing it when it sucks.
For right now, our bike adventures are fun.
The pre-ride hang out
The drive to the trail head
The time on the trail
Packing up our bikes
Finding a place to eat.
All the fun talks we have along the way.
Mind you - we could do the same if we just went on a hike in the woods. Or kayaking. Or running! Mix and match!
This morning I ran with the Chasing Trail group in Philadelphia, and honestly it was a suck-fest for most of the run, and I wanted to have a pity party for about a minute.
“I run so much, why can’t I get in a good effort here?”
”I’ve been running some hills, why can’t I get up these?!”
”Why am I the slowest person here?”
”My Whoop recover score was 95%!”
But then I remembered that “fun” doesn’t just come by way of a killer pace, or beating someone to the top of the hill. This was a group run, meant to be nice and social. How quickly I forgot that we couldn’t even do these group runs a few months ago due to COVID!
The fun was meeting a pal from Instagram.
The fun was running on some new trails.
The fun was seeing some great puppers.
Clapping for a guy riding his mountain bike up a big giant hill.
And you know it’s a good run when you celebrate with multiple beverages.
Have a great week, everyone!