This week in Learn to Run, someone posted about how she couldn’t imagine ever being able to run 5km with relative ease. And how was she ever going to do that?
Pressure and time. The same way diamonds are made.
Everything seems impossible in the beginning. I remember trying to run for a minute at a time and having to really focus on that tree 10m in front of me to keep going. Sometimes my body fought with my mind. Sometimes my mind fought with my body. I remember seeing other people who looked a lot like they were out for a run and not dying and honestly I never thought I would be one of those people.
The secret of running is that fitness and distance is built over years and decades, not over a few weeks. Pressure and time.
And even when you’ve achieved what seemed impossible (running 5km without stopping for example), the next step seems just as impossible. But achieving that one impossible thing once, gives you enough of a spark of madness to try for the next impossible thing. Eventually, if you do that enough times you realise that there is no impossible. There is only pressure and time.
There will be times when you think about giving up. Because it is hard to be patient with something when you aren’t blessed with natural talent. It takes patience and discipline to commit the process of mastery. But once you find once you do is that it’s the process that you love, not the outcome. You love the person you are when you have to dig deep to find something more. You are proud of the person you are when you get up early in the morning to meet the sunrise. And to become the person who can achieve the next impossible, you have to become someone pretty amazing. And all it takes is pressure and time.
The time will pass anyway, right? You might as well be great. That’s how diamonds are made.
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