Caught in the Trap of Comparison

I’ve had to lay low this past week after an old injury reared its head again, and I’ve found myself caught in the trap of comparison far too many times.

I have been dealing with some glute/high hamstring pain while running this past month. Initially I injured it when I raced the Her Tern Half Marathon last July and then did a poor job recovering afterwards because my sister and brother-in-law were in town, so we were busy camping, hiking, and exploring Alaska. The pain was always minimal–usually just a sense of feeling tight. After a couple of months it finally went away, which I was happy about because it cleared up right before the Twin Cities Marathon last October.

However, I reaggravated it at the Heart Run 5K back in April, and it hasn’t been getting better. I’ve been increasing my mileage (smartly) and doing intense workouts, but the hard workouts would always leave my sore. On easy run, it would bother me for just a couple of minutes at the start of a run but then warm up quickly and be fine. Over time it wasn’t improving, and I was starting to feel twinges throughout the day and lingering discomfort on hard days.

I knew it was time to see the physical therapist for some help. I’ve had luck with dry needling in the past, so I went to United Physical Therapy in Anchorage for some help. I’ve been getting some dry needling, and it has been helping, but the physical therapist also suggested I cut back on the mileage and intensity for a little while. I tried running 7 miles on Tuesday–and while it felt fine during the run, I was feeling the effects a few hours after the run, so I haven’t run since then, and that was my only run in the last week.

Prior to this injury, I kept comparing myself to where I was last year at this time, and also where I was two years ago when I was in the best shape of my life. I wanted to be back to running at a 6:20 tempo pace comfortably, and to be firing off 2:50s for 800 meter repeats. Even though I was running, I wasn’t satisfied.

Now when I’m dealing with an injury, I just want to be running period. I immediately wish I was back to doing hard workouts and high mileage–even though when I was doing those type of workouts, I wished I wasn’t hurting so much and just wanted to do easy miles every day. (However, we all know that isn’t going to make us faster.) But I was running! But it was never good enough because I wasn’t hitting the times I wanted to. Once again–never satisfied.

The comparison trap seems even more prominent with social media as we can see how quickly (or not) someone progresses after having a baby, splits others are running, comparing body types, or see the PRs others are setting. Many of us automatically compare ourselves to these people and feel like we aren’t doing enough. Yet at the same time we aren’t giving the progress we have made any acknowledgement. We are all at different points in our training!

If you do have a presence on social media, it is easy to want to impress your followers with your accomplishments. We worked hard for a shiny new PR or maybe we battled a lot of external factors to get to the finish line. I definitely don’t think there is anything wrong with sharing our progress, but we all know there’s a fine line between encouraging others and then causing others to feel obligated to train a certain way and do things that could potentially injure them. I’m sure I’ve fallen guilty to this!

While I don’t think it is most people’s intent to cause others to fall into this trap, it is good to be reminded that that one snapshot is never the full picture!

With all of this said, I mostly write this for myself, to remind myself that while it is easy to get caught up wishing it were last year or the year before, I could be wishing I were here, right now, a year from now. Who knows what life will bring, so live in the moment and know that not everything will be perfect all the time. Right now I’m thankful to be sleeping through the night now because that was not the case two years ago, and I’m thankful to be stronger than I was last year at this time. Let’s just hope this injury doesn’t last 10 months like my last one because I live for summer running and racing season. It’s why I get up at 5 a.m. on all of those bitter cold mornings when the temps are in the single digits for six months out of the year.