Track and Field Blogs - Nate Jenkins

I am in most aspects of life a patient person and in most aspects very persistent, I think my family would say stubborn but I'm being positive. But in running I tend to struggle with patients, both in the short term in terms of racing and long term, in waiting for improvement and success. I do better in running with persistence. Both are absolutely important to running success, but what are they and how can we use them.

Patients the ability to wait with a calm feeling for something you want desperately, thats not the websters definition but its how I think of it. In running I think the first place you need to learn this is in racing. It is also an area that many of use really struggle with, in high school you can often get away with charging to a front and running like a mad man simply ringing every ounce out of your self and skeleton walking in. Everyone tends to go out to fast and also the depth of competition often isn't that good. But the problem with the run like a mad man from the gun plan is that though you do run very hard and feel like you killed yourself, because you did, you often haven't got the most out of yourself in terms of performance.

I remember the first time i really learned this lesson. I was running my first outdoor 5000m race in college. I had run much faster in college then in High school, having split faster for 2 miles in both my indoor 5k's then I had run for 2 miles in hs, but I was still racing like a mad man. I wasn't happy with my performances because some guys I was beating on in workouts were running faster then I was. My coach at the time, George Davis, laid down the law at this little meet in San Diego. I wasn't allowed to go out in under 5 mins for the mile or under 10 mins for 2 miles. I protested this was a huge setback, what good was a fast last mile if I gave away 25 seconds the first 2 miles? But George was old school and not in the mood to argue, he told me I had two choices, do as he told me or find my own way home to Lowell, MA. Now that may sound like an empty threat but I had scene George leave a kid in Conn. to find his own way home after he defied him and had heard a number of stories about it, including one kid having to find his way back from extreme western Penn., which is like a 10 hour drive to Lowell. I wasn't about to test George on this.

So I crawled out in close to last place but was surprised to be moving up through the field within a lap of running. I stayed on pace as ordered and got to 2 miles in 10:02 and let it fly. I felt like a total sandbagger as I tore up through the field. I ended up finishing in the top 5 and running 15:22 an 18 second personal best. I also left the race knowing I could run faster. Unlike my previous 5k's which had left me crushed physically and emotionally. We also had an idea of what kind of pace I could and should go out at the next time, unlike after my other mad dog attempts that left us only with the knowledge that 4:40 for the first mile was too fast.

Since this race I have not always exercised great patients in racing, nor should you, once in a while you need to just go out and test your limits, but I have built a career on running well and putting myself in position to run the best race I possibly can.

Now persistence is much more straight forward in racing. We all here that cry from your body to ease up, to give in, to bend just a little. Only you know when you bend or break to this cry and when you triumph over it, which makes it all that much easier to pack it in, but all that much more of a victory when you over come because you have done it for all the right reasons.

In the long view I suffer from a near complete lack of patients, I want to be good and I want it right now. I have had every injury in the book because I can't seem to accept that it is going to take a little longer to get to that next workout or to make that next bit of improvement. It is my biggest detraction. I hate to wait for success, I want to beat ryan hall and martin lel and i want to do it the next time out. Most peoples who's brains are wired like this are screwed. This is not a sport that gives many instant rewards, Heck Jim Ryun was probably the most talented runner in history and he still took 2 years of some of the hardest training ever done to crack 4 mins in the mile. That's as fast as it happens. Most of the runners who make the Olympics are riddled with talent and still have been working hard for at least a decade. So if you lack patients its not a good start. But persistence can overcome it. If you simply can't figure out how to quite something, can't recognize when it is time to quit time to accept that you haven't got a chance. The ability to, no matter what the disappointment or set back, to continue to move forward one step at a time to steadily keep going forward is perhaps more then anything in this sport an absolute requirement.

So how do you develop persistence and patients, well the same way you develop as a runner, practice. You make yourself wait and accept waiting. You make yourself go out the door for those miles when your tired, when it's raining, when it's late at night, when it's 10 below zero, when it's snowing. No matter what and each individual time is a victory. You are going to miss days you are going to lose, but then somewhere down the line you will think back and realize you can't remember the last time you didn't get out the door, as Zatopek said "Motivation is no longer a problem."

So the next time you have a shitty race and then have to get up for a morning run the next day it's raining remember we have all had these days and the champions are made right there on the mornings when you want nothing more then to sleep a little longer.