All hail Guest Post Wednesday and the ever-wonderful Gareth!
photo credit: Fuzzy Gerdes
Recently, our hostess, the Queen of Awesomesauce, went and did a 14km walk (that’s 9 miles for you anti-metric-ites), and the next day experienced a couple of minor aches and pains which got her thinking about the emotional cost of big work, and why you need to rest afterward.
It’s easy to spot the effect that physical exertion has, you hobble around like an old lady, have to walk down stairs backwards, and generally just creak. It’s not so easy to spot the signs of emotional exertion. These vary from person to person. One person may get ratty while another may become apathetic. Me, I tend towards lethargy, my work ethic goes from slow-and-steady to stopped-and-stationary.
Here are a couple of tricks I’ve learnt during marathon training that may help you out.
1 – You have to build up to it
You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to go run 42.2 km’s. You build up to it over a period of months or years, starting with once round the block and ending with the triumphant crossing of the finish line. You have to do the same with running an awesome website. Posting daily is great, if you can maintain it. Posting daily for a week, then burning out and not posting for 6 weeks is decidedly unawesome. Start by practicing in a nice safe enviroment, something like, 750 words. This is a nice place to get a feel for how much writing you can comfortably do, and it gives you a chance to stretch your comfort zone a little. The other nice thing is you can use it to prewrite blog posts during the practice. That way you get some buffer for the hectic weeks.
The one thing to be wary of while you’re building up though is self-criticism. If you miss a day, or 2 or 3, it’s fine. You just know that you weren’t ready for that schedule. However, you do know how many days you can go for without a break, and next time, you can try to go 1 better. Soon you’ll be on a such a roll that stopping doesn’t even enter into your head.
2 – Schedule Easy Periods
Training for a marathon is not a quick short term thing. You commit to it and you’re in it for the long haul. This is very much like the path to being awesome online. One of the most important things in a marathon training schedule is the concept of “the easy week” Every 4th week you take it easy. This doesn’t mean doing no training. It means not pushing yourself to go further or faster. The point of this week is to give your body a little chance of recuperating. You should be doing the same with your emotional work. Perhaps you could schedule 1 or 2 fewer coaching sessions or decide to let the product sit for a week. Give yourself some downtime. Don’t get caught into thinking that you should use the time you’ve freed up to write 17 guest posts. Instead take a break, read a book, watch a movie, or just go out and enjoy the sunshine, whatever relaxes you. A little chosen relaxation periodically, sure beats relaxation forced on you by those men in white coats.
3 – Listen to your body
This is critical, and incredibly hard to do. When you’re training, there are clear signs of overwork, you need more sleep, your legs feel heavy, even on a short run, and instead of being energised by exercise, you get lethargic. These signs are there for emotional marathons too, but they’re more subtle, and require a lot more self-awareness to pick up. If you start feeling out of sorts for no particular reason, it’s probably time to take a break. Learn your other warning signs. A little prevention here can prevent a big meltdown later.
4 – Taper
In your training schedule, the last week or two leading up to a marathon are referred to as taper weeks. What you do is gradually back off on your training so that by the time the race comes you’re desperate to run. This doesn’t mean stop all together, but where you were doing 60km in a week, you back it down to 40. They way to use this for your awesome website is easy. if you know you’re coming up to a big launch or a free consulting offer, you might want to scale back your commitments. Perhaps, post a “best of” series, or a beginners guide (especially useful if you’ve been going for a while) or even a couple of five-minute missions. That way, when the work piles on as your deadline looms, you’re fresh and eager for the challenge.
5 – Rest
After the big day, rest is critical. Even if you don’t think you need it, you do. It doesn’t need to be a long rest time, maybe a day or two, (it all depends on the magnitude of the event), but you do need rest. If you don’t rest, you might not notice it immediately, but very soon, something that would normally be a minor niggle, becomes a season ending injury(not something you want to have to go through if you could have prevented it). Far better to push back a few commitments than have to cancel them entirely.
Blogging, like running, gets under your skin very quickly. It becomes a reason to get up in the morning. Being a little sensible about it, means you can keep doing it, and have many successful race days.
Can your mind run long-distance yet? Tell us in the comments!
Gareth uses marathons to train for when he has to run away from the Dragon. An event that happens more often than he’d like.