Week 7 – Done Better Than Perfect

Nadia Jones will be covering her training for the 3 months leading up to the Tuscaloosa Half Marathon. If you would like to follow her journey, you can visit this blog each week for updates!

Here are the weekly summaries so far if you want to catch up, if not scroll down for Week 4+5 updates!

• Week 1 – I cover The Galloway Run Walk Run Method, and I attempt to define the word “postpartum.”
• Week 2 – Stop trying to buy your training shoes yourself and go to a running specialty store. I also discuss how NOT to clean your running shoes.
• Week 3 – A good book, a New Year’s resolution, and some lessons from my first love (basketball) gave me some good #thoughtswhilerunning.
• Week 4+5 – Lessons on SelfDiscipline from Navy SEALs and how it relates to physical training
• Week 6 – How "getting benched” can produce perseverance, a reflection on Jalen Hurts’ journey to his big Super Bowl win and how we can grow during challenging times

Have you ever heard someone describe themselves as being “Type A” or “Type B?” Since this IS a blog post and IS NOT a clinical psychology report, I want to keep the definitions as simple as possible. Here are the Oxford Dictionary definitions of Type A and Type B.

• Type A: a personality type characterized by ambition, high energy, and competitiveness, and thought to be susceptible to stress and heart disease.
• Type B: a personality type characterized as easygoing and thought to have low susceptibility to stress.

As someone who identifies with the Type A personality, I have to ask the following question:  If Type A’s are susceptible to heart disease, what are Type B’s susceptible to? Having excellent blood pressure? Maybe chronic relaxation? Just kidding – I have no idea what it’s like to be “Type B” so I can’t even fathom what they might be more susceptible to.

Low key, I also feel like using the word “Type A” is way gentler than using the word perfectionist. Although my husband and the trunk of my car would say otherwise, I have struggled with perfectionism in my life. Before I was a mom, I was very particular about the way I prayed, ate, worked, exercised, read, you name it. I remember my “weakness” that I would discuss at PT school interviews – being over meticulous. At the time I thought I was disguising a strength as a weakness, but now I can see that answer was a far cry from a strength.

As a believer, I know that striving to be perfect is unattainable. However, that has not stopped me in the past from losing sleep, ruining the fun, or even turning a small issue into a big issue in my pursuit of perfection. I have felt even more convicted over perfectionism as I study a book that my colleague Claire (the one who has recommended almost every adult book I’ve read since children) gifted me for Christmas, “Respectable Sins.” In the first few pages of the book the author Jerry Bridges mentions perfectionism and being overly rigid as sins that we have grown to tolerate and even embody. The premise of the book is that as believers we have overlooked the “seemingly” smaller sins to cast judgement on the big obvious ones. In reality, a  sin is a sin no matter how big or small we personally see it.

And for the 7^th week in a row, readers are asking, “How does this relate to training for the Tuscaloosa Half Marathon?” In the past I have overreached, overtrained, and overall – just overdone a lot in my pursuit of perfection. I can think of so many examples where a goal  spiraled because good wasn’t enough - perfect was what I wanted.

I believe my second child Brady was a God send for so many reasons, but one that has been particularly obvious AND humbling has been her ability to break me in my pursuit of perfectionism. For the first year of her life I didn’t sleep through the night, we had no schedule, and I chose to eat ice cream and watch Netflix rather than exercise with my 1 adult hour every night. Add total “Moms on Call” schedule failure, me not being able to interpret her cries very well, struggling with nursing, and constant contact naps to my day and you get a mom who was far from feeling perfect. Being perfect is an illusion. While I am still dealing with some negative behaviors related to this deeply rooted sin, I can honestly say that I am beginning to adopt the mantra of “Done is better than perfect.” This and LOTS of prayer have been helpful.

In December, I decided I would run/walk either the 5k or the Half at the Tuscaloosa Half Marathon. In early January, I decided I would commit to three days a week of training. In early February, I decided I would go after the Half. In the last two weeks, I have challenged myself to push a little more than I did the previous training day. Instead of setting a rigid goal in the beginning, I am taking it training day by training day. I guess you could say that was the most Type B thing I’ve said in this whole blog post.

On Saturday I missed the group long run. The child that humbled me is still teaching me about the lack of control that I actually possess, and she was up at 4 am after I had stayed up until midnight working on both of my little darling’s baby books. I texted Claire my colleague, fellow book worm, and running expert friend about what I should do around noon. I was disappointed that the 9 miles I was going to try to make-up on a treadmill was not going to be the same as the 9 miles I would have run with the whole group at 7:30 am. My brain started spiraling about how this was going to completely wreck Week 7 training and start wreaking havoc on Week 8. Thankfully Claire is wise and an encourager – she told me to get the 9 miles in however I could. This helped me take pressure off of myself regarding pace and terrain. As much as I wanted to continue to make excuses for why I would just not run the Tuscaloosa Half Marathon and go back to Netflix and ice cream nights because I missed ONE group run, I took Claire’s advice and just did the dang thing. It wasn’t a perfect run, but done was better than perfect!

Quote of the Week – Week 7

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Google has credited this quote to several folks - I heard it first from Kendell Jno-Finn, owner of M3 Performance and Physical Therapy.

Playlist – Week 7

1. We Can’t Be Friends – Ariana Grande – I always like to start out with something LOUD and SLOW for warm-up, this checks both boxes and has a nice melody to pick your cadence.
2. More Than You Know - Axwell /\ Ingrosso - Tempo says 123 bpm, but has a chorus that is loud and will drown your cries out if you are going up a hill – this song always reminds me of running when I was pregnant with my first. I wanted to go faster, but literally could not
3. Eyes Closed – Imagine Dragons - 173 bpm, GREAT for you people with a higher cadence. Maybe save for the end of a run if you pace yourself with music.