Running Out of a Recession
If you aren’t familiar with the standard business cycle, it goes something like this:
First, a company starts to turn a profit and devotes more resources to a consumer-driven economy. Smart companies expend, and expand, wisely and hold ample cash reserves for a rainy day; in other words, they keep their ambitions in check. Others just keep spending, urged on by competitors and a zeal for breaking records with little thought to how that unbridled growth will be sustained. During the next phase, everyone inhales the air of prosperity and continues to spend to keep the buzz going. But businesses are like living organisms that are always changing. At some point, something triggers the collective consciousness – a market shift, inflation, energy crisis, etc. -- and consumers start to retrench, prompting a chain-reaction economic slowdown. This eventually leads to an overall, sometimes painful contraction – sloughing off the excess that accumulated during the best of times. We know it better as a recession.
I’ve come to realize runners tend to follow a similar pattern. Unless you hold something back during heady times and expend and expand smartly (in mileage and intensity), you’re going to pay in the end. You’ll be forced to downsize goals as the body forces its own “correction” through self-induced injury or protracted illness. Smart runners remember the hard times and, once able to regain ground, enter a new era of prosperity a little wiser. Speeds increase and personal records fall. But eventually that era will yield to another slowdown brought on by age or overtraining or a change in lifestyle.
Me? I’ve been through enough running recessions now to realize I need a new business plan. This one won’t have me planning out races beyond the next quarter, let alone plucking down costly fees that can’t be recouped. It will involve a lot of cross training. It also will involve me running solo, though I’ll still connect with my running group through weekend volunteer work and the occasional Tuesday evening track workout. But for 2008, it’s going to be primarily just me and my thoughts (and maybe some music) on those moonlit suburban streets and sun-soaked trails. You, however, are always welcomed to join me.
First, a company starts to turn a profit and devotes more resources to a consumer-driven economy. Smart companies expend, and expand, wisely and hold ample cash reserves for a rainy day; in other words, they keep their ambitions in check. Others just keep spending, urged on by competitors and a zeal for breaking records with little thought to how that unbridled growth will be sustained. During the next phase, everyone inhales the air of prosperity and continues to spend to keep the buzz going. But businesses are like living organisms that are always changing. At some point, something triggers the collective consciousness – a market shift, inflation, energy crisis, etc. -- and consumers start to retrench, prompting a chain-reaction economic slowdown. This eventually leads to an overall, sometimes painful contraction – sloughing off the excess that accumulated during the best of times. We know it better as a recession.
I’ve come to realize runners tend to follow a similar pattern. Unless you hold something back during heady times and expend and expand smartly (in mileage and intensity), you’re going to pay in the end. You’ll be forced to downsize goals as the body forces its own “correction” through self-induced injury or protracted illness. Smart runners remember the hard times and, once able to regain ground, enter a new era of prosperity a little wiser. Speeds increase and personal records fall. But eventually that era will yield to another slowdown brought on by age or overtraining or a change in lifestyle.
Me? I’ve been through enough running recessions now to realize I need a new business plan. This one won’t have me planning out races beyond the next quarter, let alone plucking down costly fees that can’t be recouped. It will involve a lot of cross training. It also will involve me running solo, though I’ll still connect with my running group through weekend volunteer work and the occasional Tuesday evening track workout. But for 2008, it’s going to be primarily just me and my thoughts (and maybe some music) on those moonlit suburban streets and sun-soaked trails. You, however, are always welcomed to join me.
