In the weeks leading up to the Sydney City2Surf I noticed that there were more and more people out walking or jogging around the lake in the early morning.
But since the event a week and a half ago, I’ve hardly seen anyone out and about. I did my jog around the lake this morning and I saw only one other person jogging and an old couple walking their dog.
The post event vacuum and how to avoid it
When you train with a very specific goal in mind – in this case, to run the City2Surf, we tend to become highly focused on that one goal. Then, when the event has passed, there is a sense of relief but there is also a vacuum is created. (A vacuum being a space filled with nothing, not something that sucks up dust!)
Whenever you take anything away and don’t replace it with something else, there will be a sense of emptiness; perhaps you may even feel a sense of loss. That something doesn’t have to be a physical thing; it can be an emotion or a feeling, or a goal.
The key is to very quickly replace the activity or goal that you were focused on with another one. So, for all the people who are no longer focused on achieving a City2Surf related goal, now is the time to very quickly find a new health and fitness goal.
If you don’t focus on a new goal, what will happen is the time you were spending on training will get absorbed into your everyday life and before you know it, that time will be lost to you and you will also lose the health benefits you gained from all that training you did in the lead up to the event.
Find a new health and fitness goal today
If you were following along with my City2Surf training routine, you will have heard me say that the training process is an opportunity to develop good habits around a regular fitness routine.
Don’t stop now. If training for the City2Surf was your goal, now is the time to refocus. There is no better start to the day than to energise your body with some good healthy activity before breakfast.
Create a new goal, set your alarm and get up and get moving first thing tomorrow morning. If you can’t think of a new goal, don’t worry, get out tomorrow morning and go for a walk, and while you are walking, use that time to find yourself a new goal.
———————
Update April 2013
My City2Surf Training Program is now an eBook
‘How to Break Your Fitness Slump and Comfortably Finish a Fun Run’
My full City2Surf training program is now available as an eBook from all leading online bookstores and contains a link to download the training schedule as an iCal file, so you can import it into your calendar.
Also, feel free to join my free Facebook training group the City2Surf 100 day Challenge.