It has been over three weeks since my last blog entry when I laid out the ‘grand plan’ for achieving my marathon goal. Planning in isolation is a surreal undertaking; it is a process that starts in the imagination, where thoughts are conjured up. In this nascent stage, there is little form to the plan, just wishes, desires and ideas. It is the ordering of these components that gives structure, from which a sensible formula is derived that finally is transformed into reality.
As a mathematician I put a lot of substance in order; not the kind of day to day order that is associated with obsessive-compulsive behaviour (although there is a fair amount of this in my personality too) but I love the mathematical order of life, of nature, and of the universe. Fibonacci sequences and geometric series fascinate me; the process of creating beauty from mathematics is enthralling. I love the elegance of a perfectly formed equation and the exquisiteness of a closed-form solution. So too in plans; a perfectly formed plan, meticulously executed is right up there as my definition of pleasure!
Margaret Thatcher is credited with the quote “Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan” and when I worked as a trader we used to follow the premise “plan your trade and then trade your plan”. It made a lot of sense; it took sentiment out of the equation in a marketplace driven by hugely-powerful twin emotions of fear and greed. The same applies of course to training plans and it is not for nothing that my Coach calls me “Robot”; I’m pretty good at following a plan as programmed.
Nevertheless, having the ‘perfect’ training plan has potential problems when converted to reality. I’m a process person and if I truly believe that the plan created is the irrefutable solution, then I am very, very reluctant to change it or let it go. I will fight tooth and nail to religiously adhere to every step, every component part that makes up my elegant creation. Ok, I can be flexible if I really have too, I’ve had enough setbacks in my life to be realistic, but in my mind I am then settling for second best or worse; the beauty of the plan has been spoilt and while it may still be practicable it becomes uglier.
So why go into all this detail? Why expose my obsessive-compulsive traits?
Well it explains what I have been dealing with in the three weeks plus since I started the ’10-week-to-race-day’ plan. Nothing has gone wrong; in fact all of it has gone swimmingly. However, I’ve had a lot of chattering from my inner chimp. To use Steve Peters’s model, the chimp represents the emotional part of my brain – that part that I wished to silence by creating the perfect plan in the first place. This is the fear factor; the ‘what if’ statements. I have found myself suddenly worrying about all manner of events that might derail me from the perfect path, and rather than having my usual confidence to start workouts secure in the knowledge that I will complete, however tough, I have been plagued by anxiety. Throughout these past weeks I have been fighting negative talk; what if I can’t do this, what if it is too hard, what if I fail; then the plan will be ruined. Suddenly every individual element of the plan was becoming a test, a goal of its own. This is particularly ridiculous as I am not even "racing" the marathon. And the rationale behind the marathon endeavour has never been about the outcome. What vexes me and sets off nagging doubts is the undoing of my ‘perfect’ plan, the beautifully formed and elegant plan.
Time has triggered this chimp activity. As in any system, the erosion of time towards a critical date intensifies the influence of volatility. Pension valuations illustrate this only too well, where those with many years to retirement are pretty immune to day to day fluctuations in the underlying assets, however it is a different story for those fast approaching their final valuation date, when any sudden movements in the stock market can have a catastrophic effect. The same can be said of chimp noise; when there is plenty of time to play with, the chimp noise can be easily muted, but as D-day approaches the loudness intensifies and can be hard to drown out. Athletes with Olympic aspirations will know this only too well as time inexorably marches on towards 27th July 2012.
It is worth noting that my Chimp isn't menacing, there are no bared teeth, it is much more of a comical creation along the lines of the primates used in the adverts in the 70s. Nevertheless it is definitely a nuisance. I like quiet, I need this to concentrate and I hate background noise. That is why I don’t train with music, however motivational it might be. I like to tap into the process not obscure it. That is why the chattering, the noise from my comedy chimp is an annoyance, and is disruptive. It has drained my emotional resources just at a time when I need to be concentrating fully on the physical and physiological demands of the training.
Of course, all this worry, this self-doubt, the noise and chattering from the chimp has been unfounded. Not that I’ve found the way to cage the chimp but it has exhausted itself for now and I’ve found a rationale to manage it. I’m learning to accept that this process does not HAVE to be mapped out absolutely, without deviation. Yes, I do want to track the plan, to fulfill my strong desire for perfection, but if this doesn’t pan out it is not a failure; indeed I may even learn new skills as a result. Opportunities, not threats!
