Possibly one of the best pieces of advice you’ll ever receive in life. Not just from running, but all aspects of our day to day activity.

We all make mistakes, in all forms of life, but if we learn from them, then we can’t be hard on ourselves. I receive feedback everyday from my runners and often they are very self critical of their own performance or effort during a training session.

This can lead to negative self talk which can be very damaging in an individual sport like running. What we need to be doing if a training session or race doesn’t go as we hoped, is reflect on what went wrong and if we can make amends next time.

Often our performance will be impacted by elements out of our control. Poor sleep, illness, a niggle and the weather. If that’s the case then it’s important to recognise that without being self judgemental.

Then there are the occasions when we are to blame for poor performance. Laziness, poor time management, lack of enthusiasm and negative self talk are just a few things that are in our control and can be altered the next time we lace up our running shoes.

That’s not to say these things won’t happen again. Cut yourself some slack, make a note of what went wrong during that race or training session and see if you can improve on it next time.

You know I like to talk about myself. Sorry about that. But this tip really helped me over the weekend to improve on my performance.

I took a short break after my recent marathon PB (have I mentioned that yet?) and decided to have a crack at a fast parkrun 10 days ago. My goal time was sub 20 minutes. I even had the pacer there to make it easy for me.

That was the first example of something out of my control effecting my performance. I ran the first km in 3:56 and the pacer was 30 metres ahead of me. He’d gone too fast, for my liking anyway. He clocked 19:24 on a slightly short course so yes, the pace was a bit quick and it was mentally draining as I saw the gap grow wider as the kilometres ticked by.

I managed to produce a strong finish and crossed the line in 20:04. 5 seconds! 🤬 I was disappointed. So rather than get upset with myself I posted on Strava the things I believed I could have done better. In other words, my mistakes.

The following week I came back and tried to correct those mistakes. The 4 things I had focused on were:

1. Add strides to my warmup
2. Try to increase my cadence to 180 or higher
3. Dig deeper in the 4th kilometre
4. Focus more on my form during the last few kms of the race

To be honest with these 4 things to focus on, I was less distracted by my pace and the sub 20 goal, than I had been 7 days ago. I knew if I focused on the process and correcting my mistakes that the outcome would take care of itself.

The result? 19:47.

I managed to learn from my mistakes from the week before and was actually more pleased from that aspect than the time itself. It’s given me a better understanding of how I can improve my running, especially on race days.

So make a note of the mistakes you make in training or races and try and correct them next time you head out the front door. You never know it might just be the difference you need to achieve your goals.