There's a quote that I just love. I think I've used it here before, it's from Gordo's blog and worth calling out again:
...we all overestimate what we can achieve in the short-term and underestimate what we can achieve in the long-term.
As I think back on many aspects of my life - education, work, relationships, athletics - this resonates deeply. And it's a lesson that's easy to forget in day-to-day activities with the natural desire for things to happen quickly.
I suspect all of us can think back of so many examples of this. Given effective habits and a good dose of discipline, things really do happen. Sometimes we hardly notice the progression. I often step back and take notice of how much many things have changed for me, even over just a few years, and it really is an amazing thing.
If I think back to my early racing days - especially after a hard effort that resulted in an "ok" result - it was so tempting to say "this is as fast as I can get". Ironman training has exposed me to time frames that I never even considered viable in the past. It was easy for me to think "I've been training my ass off for 4 months and I'm not improving...maybe this just isn't working." Little did I know that 4 months is nothing in terms of physiological adaptations.
There is, of course, a ceiling for all of us, but I'm struck by how hard it is to know what or where our ceilings really are. And how critical it is to have people around to remind us of this. Even very successful people can do a lot of self-limiting thinking.
In 2007, I trained and raced very hard over a period of almost 11 months. I had some really good results, but it took so much effort to get there, it seemed impossible to go faster. Intellectually I knew that I was already in a better place than many people who'd been working at it for a few years. And I had many, many examples of people who had improved dramatically beyond where I was after a slower start. But some part of me still didn't believe it. How could I do that much better given the effort I'd put in?
Over the winter, I kept consistent on my cycling and swimming (kind of) but really focused on my running. I really did improve and felt good about the marathon that I ran off that training. On running, I've heard over and over "it takes a long time to get good". But the negative selft-talk is powerful: seeing some people around me who quickly improved far beyond where I was at challenged me to believe that I could get there. It seemed so easy for them.
As the spring rolled around, I've been running a bit less and spending more time on the bike and in the pool. Going back to February, I was getting frustrated about both. I felt like my bike fitness had slipped significantly. And I really felt like I wasn't improving in the pool. I was stuck.
But in late March or early-April something happened - almost suddenly. And across all three disciplines. I started having rides with power numbers I hadn't seen before - seeing average power on 3 hour rides over 200 watts. While I had to push all-out to swim a 300 in better than 4:30 in February, I was comfortably turning out 300s in 4:25, often as part of longer sets, and was repeating 400s right at 6:00. And my "easy cruise" running has pace dropped from the 8:30s into the 8:05-8:10 range. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced and I spent most of April thinking it was a fluke of some sort. All of these things seemed out of my reach just a few months ago, and now they're becoming normal. In most cases I don't feel like I'm going any faster, or harder, but I am. And to top it all off, I recover from the efforts much more quickly.
So far, it's not a fluke. I'll often have runs that feel slow and sluggish, but come home and see that my pace was much faster than I thought. It's hard to place faith in this happening because you never know how, if, or when it will get you where you want to be.
I guess the point is that you can get a really long way but just chipping away. That house, that job, that promotion, that weight or fitness goal. Just keep chipping away; you may get farther than you ever thought.