We runners love to run our mouths about flexibility. But only regarding our muscles and tendons. Not our brains.
Mental flexibility is key. Not only on race days, where something is always going sideways. But also on the everyday days, when life is always getting in the way of our perfect plans.
Maybe a time crunch is taking a bite out of my workout schedule.
Once in a while I just have to admit defeat and let go of my goal for the day. But there are other days when I can shake off my all-or-nothing mentality and turn obstacles into opportunities.
Something is always better than nothing. And a little can be a whole lot.
If I am pressed for time and, say, have only a half hour between Zoom meetings, I can slip in a sneaky twenty-minute out and back.
Going strictly by my watch, I’ll give myself ten minutes to jog any which way. At the ten-minute mark I’ll do a hard 180 and head back to base. Extra points if I pick up the pace and make it back in nine. Yes, at the front and back ends, lightning-fast wardrobe changes and showering is required, but that’s just part of the workout.
Other days, if I am swamped with errands, I can try to weave together some of the chores into a utility run, something I used to do all the time on the sidewalks of Brooklyn.
Nowadays, in the stretched-out shopping geography of my suburban life, it’s a little more challenging, but it can be done.
Last Christmas Eve day, I ventured with my wife to the Target a couple hamlets down the pike for some last-minute holiday shopping. A workout in itself, for sure.
In the parking lot, after safely isolating my melting AmEx card in the glove compartment and unloading the overstuffed shopping cart, I did a quick backseat change into my running togs from the Go Bag I always keep in the trunk, grabbed a couple of overdue library books, tied four dirty dress shirts around my waist, and started to jog 3 miles north on the sidewalks and generally wide shoulders of the main road for drop-offs at the cleaners and library in our village while my wife drove away to do a little more shopping.
Forty minutes later she pulled up just as I was making a final sprint to the library drop box. It wasn’t a competition but I gave myself the win.
Snatching a little something from the jaws of defeat always feels like a very sweet victory.
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