What We Forget: How to Reflect on Your Running Journey and Celebrate Your Progress!

As the air cools and leaves start turning yellow, we find ourselves quickly approaching the Berkeley Half Marathon. Whether you’re running the race or not, you’re likely looking toward your next milestone. However, I want you to take a moment and reflect on the journey that got you where you are today.

You didn’t simply wake up one day, miraculously ready to tackle a half marathon. Heck, you didn’t wake up one day ready to run your first 5k. You made a conscious choice to begin training to reach a goal. Today, let’s do one crucial thing many forget: reflect on your running journey and celebrate your progress!

Written by Lucas Collins
Edited by Pavlína Marek

Whether it was to ring in the new year or you had set a goal a long time ago, you’ve been putting in the effort to make better yourself.  I hope you’re able to picture and celebrate each aspect of your journey as you read through this article.

1. Setting your Goals

Do you remember your first goal? That moment when you said it was time to get serious and took your first steps to begin training?  If you do, then that first-ever goal must seem laughably small compared to the goals you set now. (And if you’re just now working on reaching your very first goal, know that, in a few years, you’ll be able to look back and feel this kind of pride!)

Each goal you’ve set on your running journey was a milestone, first intimidating and then conquered as you moved on to the next one. With every marker of progress being bigger than the last, it can be difficult to see how tall each hurdle really was when you first encountered it.  But like a row of dominos, each fell in turn and cleared the way for the next goal to be set.  When the domino for Berkeley falls like all the others, what will be the next hurdle in your way?

Your Task: Think about three of your previous goals that now may feel like small achievements. Try to remember how you felt when you first set these goals. How does it compare to how your current goals make you feel?

2. Reflecting on your Challenges

Each goal you set came with its own set of challenges.  Like the goals themselves, you’ve conquered the challenges, too. But that doesn’t mean they were a walk in the park. Finishing your first mile without slowing down to walk felt Sisyphean before you managed to finally roll that boulder up the hill. Most challenges feel like that before you overcome them, but hindsight can sometimes minimize the effort you exerted to put the challenge behind you.

Some of those challenges were bigger than others. They demanded more effort and commitment to accomplish what felt like a similar result. However, the extra work put in to overcome them made you all the better for it and may have made future challenges easier by comparison.

Your Task: List some of the things you previously found challenging. How did they challenge you? What did you learn from them? Do they still feel challenging or do they look like a walk in the park in hindsight? That’s growth! (What future challenge will make you look back at Berkeley or any other race you may be training for as just another notch on your belt?)

3. Celebrating Achievements

Each goal, big and small, helped contribute to your overall training progress. When you’re looking back, it’s crucial to acknowledge all of the steps you had to take, the challenges you’ve overcome, and the goals you’ve reached. They should all be celebrated for the commitment taken to reach them.

Ideally, you celebrate those accomplishments in the moment. When you finish that first 5k, let the euphoria curse through your veins. When you finish the Berkeley Half Marathon in November, let out whoops of joy. However you decide to celebrate these moments, be sure to enjoy them to their fullest and use them as motivation to reach your next goal.

 

Your Task: How did you celebrate your last achievement? Did you take time to enjoy the sense of accomplishment at all? If you didn’t take a moment to pat yourself on the shoulder, do so now! Remember the joy you felt and appreciate its importance. Additionally, plan your next celebration; will you go get some good food after your next race? Get drinks with friends? Scream and jump up and down as you cross the finish line, overwhelmed with joy? (We have good photographers; your finish line pictures won’t get blurry!)

4. Setting New Goals

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), there will always be new challenges for a runner to take on. You can always strive for a faster time, a longer distance, a better pace, and more. It is this kind of drive, the perpetual race for self-improvement, that gives the sport such longevity. Even the best runner in the world is never truly done. Every time they set a new record, they have a new record to beat. This applies to every runner at every level of running. Berkeley is the ‘record’ many of you are striving to beat right now. Once you do, what will be the next goal to strive for?

Your Task: Look back at the three goals you’ve listed in the first task. How did they differ from each other? Can you see progression in them? How does your current goal compare to them? How do you think will your future goals be different, and in what new ways will they challenge you?

Hopefully taking the time to look back at all of the ground you’ve covered since deciding to start your running journey and setting your eyes on Berkeley will motivate you to give it your all these next few months. It is no easy feat running a half marathon, but it is exactly what every goal set, challenge overcome, and achievement celebrated has prepared you for. With Berkeley behind you, think about what you could accomplish next!

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