Trust The Plan

Be patient with me. I promise you haven’t fallen into Annie’s World of Knitting. This really is running related.

When I saw this pattern on Ravelry, I fell in love. I knew it would be a challenge but the challenge is what attracts me to knitting. Creating something with just a ball of yarn and a couple of needles amazes me with each new project.

As I began this project I doubted my ability but approached it the same way I approach other challenges in my life, one bite at a time and after a few rows I found a rhythm. I began to feel confident that I could complete the pattern without problems. Then, about three quarters of the way through, the pattern made a shift and I spent three hours knitting, pulling out and reknitting the same row, over and over. The pattern had to be wrong. I looked online for an errata, anything that would help me salvage the project. Then I took a deep breath and decided to stop worrying and trust the pattern. Two rows later, I saw where it was going. I understood and knew I would make it.

Obviously, this is not a knitting blog. But it is a running blog about the mental side of running and the life lessons I have learned through running. So, maybe it’s time to explain how this knitting project relates to my running life.

This morning, after taking that breath, moving forward and realizing that I needed to trust, I had one of those aha moments. This time the lesson came from knitting but the truth is it can so clearly be applied to running. Lately, I have been on a comeback. I set goals, some challenging, others meant to get me through those challenges. But in the past couple of weeks I have been doubting myself. I have been doubting the plan.

But Coach Jeff Kline says it best, “Work the plan, trust the plan.” And he’s right. I might not see how I will make it to the end. Right now, the shorter, slower runs I am doing do not seem to be pushing me forward but I have to stop, take a breath and move forward. I have to trust that today’s work will lead to tomorrow’s success.

I love life lessons learned through challenges. Obviously, there is the bonus of finding the positives in a given situation but the best part is realizing how many times we have to apply these same strategies. Whether we are in the middle of a training cycle, working on a knitting project, studying for a test, or working on our marriage, there will always come that moment of doubt. Are we doing enough? Are we doing it right? Should we just scrap this and start over in a new direction? But if we take a minute and trust the plan that we set in place in the beginning, more often than not, everything will work out.