A meme or quote exists for almost everything. Search for “meme + (insert anything under the sun here)” and something will pop up. And yes, I did actually search for “meme + anything under the sun” and came up with tons of images!
I get memes. They can be funny, silly, or inspiring. But sometimes they can be wrong.
For instance, there are a lot of memes about looking back that are intended to be inspiring: “Don’t look back. You aren’t going that way” “The past is the past. Move forward and don’t look back” and in the theme of running “Sometimes in life you need to run fast, run far and don’t look back.” Sure, these make sense in some contexts, but not in all. And that last meme was not written by a runner, I bet!
Some runners keep diaries of their runs, or enter such data into apps. Why? To be able to look back and either see how far they have come, but also to learn what worked in their training and what didn’t work so well.
I don’t keep a running diary but I do post some of my experiences on social media. An experience happened recently with social media that highlighted the value of looking back.
A month ago I was on the last 32 km training run before a marathon and at 28 km I mentioned to my running buddy that “I feel like an imposter. I don’t feel like a runner. How am I going to finish the marathon?” She replied “Welcome to my world.” She felt the same thing. When I got home, deflated, one of those social media “memories” I had written automatically popped up and was waiting for me. That memory was from exactly one year earlier, in the same stage of training. In that earlier post I said that I felt like an imposter and didn’t know how I would finish the upcoming marathon!
I realized then, for the first time, that running is a series of cycles. Start training…. feel yourself getting stronger…. getting faster…. longer distances…. oh, I don’t think I can do this…. why am I doing this?….I’m an imposter….complete the race….rest….start training….
Once I realized I had been through this deflated, self-sabotaging inner talk at each previous training session, I felt better. I reflected on the fact that in the end I had finished all my races and that my body had held up remarkably well in each instance. As had my mind.
I took that opportunity of looking back to look forward.
Now I know that I will feel the same “imposter syndrome” near the end of the next training session. It will still be hard, but it will be a natural occurrence, and I’ll know that I can overcome it and push on. Sometimes we need to look back. Sometimes it’s the only way to greet what’s coming. Keep moving forward, but don’t forget to look back, theoretically speaking that is. We don’t want any injuries from running into inanimate objects!