Included in our Week 5 plan starting July 6, I added a few goals. Most of these are not directly related to running, and I also know not everyone reads the footnotes of the plan đ so I wanted to repeat some here.
Some goals for the week of July 6:
- A goal you can certainly check off this week: While you are running, say âGood morning!â or âHave a nice day!â or âYour dog is really cute!â to at least one pedestrian while you are running. You can make the world a little bit happier!
- Try to be on time every day this weekâ7 AM! To be sure you are there at 7âŚplan to be there at 6:55. (If you only allow the bare minimum time to get anyplace, you will be late now and then. To be on time consistently, you need to give yourself some cushion. Thatâs why Angela Duckworth says that 5 minutes early is being on time. Being on time is not only a prosocial act, being on time consistently also earns you a better reputation for reliability.)
- One day this week, run part (or all) of the warm-up with someone you have not run with before and ask them how they are doing.
- Pick up one piece of trash off the ground (not your trash!) and throw it away every day this week. Another way to contribute to our society and make it a little better! (It will make you feel better too. Another Angela Duckworth story…one of my friends is a PhD student and Angela is their advisor. One day they were feeling depressed and a little whiny in a meeting with Dr. Duckworth. Angela told them, “OK this meeting is over. This weekend, I want you to take all Sunday morning and walk around Philadelphia picking up trash. Then let’s meet on Monday. You will feel better then.”)
- How is your conversational pace feeling? Is your âeasy/conversationalâ pace faster than it used to be? Here are some things to tryâŚafter drills when we start running again, run with someone who is usually faster than you for the first 5 minutes (set your watch and time this). Maybe you find you can keep going with them, or next week run 7 minutes with them, and 10 the week afterâŚbefore long, your pace will be the same as theirs. Hopefully you are feeling faster and more conscious of your pace already. Push yourself a tiny bit now and then! A faster conversational pace will lead to a faster race pace.
- Figure out a fun bonding activity for next week for you and your friends and teammates, or if someone else suggests something, say âYES! Iâm down.â
I tried to come up with some goals for the week that point to the same idea: that small, consistent choices compound. A “good morning” to a stranger, five extra minutes of cushion before practice, one piece of trash picked up, one conversation with a teammate you don’t usually run with â none of these show up directly in our race results or in a performance review. But these acts shape the kind of runner (and person) you’re becoming and the kind of team we have. That’s the same principle behind the conversational pace challenge I stuck in there, too: we don’t get faster by hoping for it, we get faster by choosing, on purpose, to run next to someone who stretches us.
Be early. Be kind. Talk to someone new. Push your pace a little. And say âYES!â when someone invites you into something â a bonding activity, a harder workout, a new friendship. Teams aren’t only built during the season or in the big moments. They’re built in weeks in the middle of summer just like this.
