032 ☼ The Swiss-Cheese-Situation

And what it has to do with running and life

Welcome to my email newsletter 'Never not [thinking about] running' - a weekly newsletter about running and mental health. If you haven't subscribed yet and you're not sure whether you really want to receive an e-mail from me on every Tuesday, have a look at the archive. Todays newsletter is about Swiss cheese, how this relates to running and how running is relating to life. Sounds like big words, but … just read for yourself. If you’re interested in the video department. I made another one - still working on my running journal and I talked about the races I’m planning to do this summer. Enjoy!

Do you know those Swiss cheeses? The ones with the holes inside of them? Some holes are big, some are medium, some are really small and then there are spaces where there are no holes at all. And do you know this visualization of your running distance? The further you've run, the bigger the circles? And where am I actually going with these questions? Well. This Swiss cheese is my running year. If you cut the cheese open, you have different slices. One with a few large and medium holes for January, one with a few large holes for February and one with almost no holes at all for March. You can see where this is going, right?

Well. My running year has been more than inconsistent. Sometimes I've done a lot, sometimes a little, but I've never produced a slice of cheese with holes of absolutely the same size. And to spare you any more anologies. The cheese still tastes good. That's not the point of today's newsletter. But I liked the Swiss-cheese-thing.

The point is that at some point, consistency makes my body run like clockwork. Let's take the last year. I didn't start quality training until June, then I built up my form, took a short break here and there, peaked, maintained my form and then the first few winter months, continued running at a relaxed pace until January and then the Swiss cheese situation began.

My form in January was better than it had ever been in January. All the figures spoke for it. Then came the first minor illness. One week off. Back in, no difference, then sick again, back in, a noticeable difference, sick again, a glaring difference, sick again briefly at the end and then the body virtually starts from scratch. Which is an exaggeration, of course.

But and we are getting closer to the core of today's text. For many months, my body coped excellently with the amount of training, with training stimuli that were repeatedly set and then the slump comes and I realize that although I quickly get back to where I want to be, this path is often characterized by hard work.

I realize that after a hard session, I'm really sore the next day, I'm thin-skinned, I'm just off track, whereas the same session five months ago would have brought a tired smile to my face. It takes me a few days to fully recover and it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a family asking me. “Dude, what's wrong with you, it's Saturday, you've got your free day, it's the weekend, why are you so on the edge?” And all because I'd run a few intervals the night before. Do you know that feeling?

And then of course I question it, but just go running again the next day, do a recovery run and a few days later I'm back to my old self. And that's totally fine for me, but my family sometimes wonders what I'm doing in my free time.

And when I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I'm trying to cope with life. When I run, I quickly overcome the odd obstacle. Running-problems are usually not as big as they first appear and I can often benefit from my experience. In the end, I run happily through the fields on a summer evening. Sounds cheesy, but that's usually the case.

What I want and what I try to explain to my family is that I want to try to transfer this mindset to the rest of my life. And that this is much harder for me than running. Because life is so varied and sometimes quite complicated.

Nevertheless, I want to give it a try, even if I often find it hard. So here we go!

Video Department

Hmmm. Those videos getting longer and longer. Maybe that’s not the best. And I’m still thinking about uploading them to youtube and implementing them then here. Any ideas?

I’m starting on the running journal thing and the around 07:42 minutes I talk about the races I’ll probably do this summer and what’s behind it. I made an extra page here.

The substack journey

I reached a 100 subscribers. Thanks to all of you. Crazy shit. They are mainly coming from Substack and all the beautiful people recommending this newsletter. Only a few coming from Google. Is that normal? Any ideas on that. I am far from being an SEO-guy.

Mental health update

As I wrote above. Running was pretty intense the last two weeks and this also influences from time to time my mental health. With tiredness negative thoughts are coming in. These situations are always challenging.

Running update

36k in the books. Three sessions. The first one was a way too fast run after some days of not running. Then another track session with the running club and a longer run (the longest in 4 weeks) at the end of the week.

The end

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