I was trodding my way through an iFit Winter treadmill workout with Billy Demong (the former Nordic combined skier and Olympian gold medalist) yesterday. During this, I think he said something that helped me put workouts and the point of workouts in perspective.
What Billy Demong said was this: Put in the work, do the workouts, follow the simple formula of “keep your hard days hard, and keep your easy days easy,” and you will improve. Your endurance and your speed will get better. Time on your feet and building endurance is like increasing the size of your engine, but by also doing hard work on hard days (speed play), you improve the speed of your engine. Both are important and vital to improving. I have heard this time and again in other books and lectures about workout plans and improving performance in sport, particularly distance running. It is a simple idea. But putting in the work itself is definitely not easy. The work is hard, and often painful, and it could be easy to give up. Showing up and doing each workout requires perseverance and diligence.
Billy also said it well later on in the workout that if you put in say an hour most days of the week (5-6 days/week), you will advance. It does not require many hours to get better. To be the best, you can put in 3-4 hours/day. But for my own novice athlete purposes, I can see 30-60 minutes/day, most days of the week way more doable, and achieves what I want to get, which is 70-80% better. Getting that last 10-20% improvement takes way more time and effort.
I have definitely seen this myself, particularly in my first year of following marathon training plans. In that first year, I went from essentially 0% ability to about 60% ability in marathon running pretty easily, by doing the work and finishing the workouts. From here, though, over the last 4 years, the gains have continued but are not as dramatic and not as plentiful. I agree with Billy that the key is steady, repeated work. I like seeing how my endurance and enjoyment of a longer run has steadily improved. I feel comfortable running at a faster baseline pace. I find it comforting and cathartic to get in a run most (if not all) days of the week, as my schedule allows.
I think the same thing holds true with everything else. We put in the work in school and professional/job training. Being in the very moment of grade school, high school, college, and med school, the work is hard, but doable. We do the same at work with our work goals and projects and deadlines. Chunking it up into a day, or week, or month, I can see that each goal I strive for is relatively simple and achievable.
If I focused too long or too hard on the end goal (26.2 miles, graduation from a 4 year college degree, or achieving a degree in medicine, or finishing a tough, grueling residency), I could see myself getting demoralized or overwhelmed. By being nearsighted though, each day or each week, I can see myself achieving and growing. And indeed, by piecing these days and weeks and months together, I have definitely improved and grown. I see the parallel with tough workouts and tough segments of workouts. A 2 minute push at tempo pace is hard in the moment. But afterward, the feeling of accomplishment is a huge reward in and of itself. I am sure that is why we keep going back for more workouts, and keep pursuing more goals.
I don’t yet have another race or goal in mind. But I strive to put in workouts most days, if not every day, of each week, to keep my endurance up. And it also serves to help me decompress and keep my mental health in check. I have not yet come up with a perfect schedule to coalesce with my family responsibilities and work responsibilities. I tend to squeeze in a workout here or there where it will fit, and it is not consistent day to day or week to week. But by prioritizing my health and my workouts, I can see myself performing better in my personal life and my work life.
I think my health is the best reward of all of this hard work, better than any particular medal or time on the clock at the end of the race. (But don’t get me wrong – I will keep pushing for the PR (personal record)!) Health is one of the most valuable commodities we have. I feel I need to put in the work each day and each week to nurture myself, body, mind, and spirit, to approach the best version of me. Self improvement (health wise and professional wise and family wise) is one of the most valuable rewards I have seen through my fitness journey and my journey in life. The process of getting better is a never ending process, and I look forward to continuing to improve.