beware the gottas

Here's my real Friday confessional. I watch this crap.
Why? I. Don't. Know.

Not to be confused with the Gottis (the original Jersey Shore boys), the "gottas" are insidious.

They start innocently enough.  "I gotta work on my core," you tell yourself after you start feeling some soreness in your lower back.  "You know, I gotta start running farther on the weekend," you decide after feeling tired after a three mile run.

Before you know it, you're looking at what friends are doing.  Mid-week runs that are ten miles long.  Speed sessions at paces in the 6 minute range.  Long runs on the weekend that span 30+ miles.  You look at what you are logging and find yourself coming up short against other runners.

"I gotta start doing some speed workouts," you'll think, "because I really gotta break 50 minutes in a 10k" or "I gotta qualify for Boston."

Did I mention that those gottas are insidious?

insidious: proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects

There's something about the "gottas".  They don't necessarily reflect what is best for you.  They seem to evolve out of comparison - looking at what others are doing or accomplishing and feeling the need to measure up.  I know.  I'm guilty of them, especially after I check out the workouts of other runners who are going farther or faster than me.  I have a lot of "gottas" about going faster in my daily runs and races.

But here's the thing.  I've been running by feel lately.  Some days I go at a decent clip, and some days I'm pretty darn slow.  I'm running injury free though, and that is huge.  The days when I've pushed against what I'm feeling because I'm feeling the "gottas" creeping in, I've felt it in my legs.  My hip starts to hurt; my knee will start to twinge.  I think that a lot of runners, myself included, end up injured when we worry more about those "gottas" than what our bodies are trying to tell us.

Because I am coaching myself, I have to beware those "gottas".  Every time I get the feeling that I gotta do something, I am stopping now to ask myself where that judgment is coming from.  Is it based in something real, or is based in my emotional reaction to what others are doing?  In the end, what I get out of running is purely up to me.  If what I want is to be able to run and run and run, then I need to avoid those "gottas" that make injury a likelihood.

Are you making "gotta" judgments about your own running? Do they truly reflect what you want out of your running experiences, or are they reactions to what others are doing?