SPORT WALK

The new year is always a bit of a mixed blessing. It feels like it’s full of new opportunities but after the initial fizz of excitement, the reality sets in – opportunities will come in time but the days are still dark and short, the weather is most likely cold and dreary and Springtime is still some way off.

It’s easy to hit a slump in January or February, so here are a few ideas to help you reframe this time and turn it to your advantage, so you can make the most of it.

Embrace the dullness

View the dark cold days as a growth opportunity. Remember that you only progress and grow through adversity and this is a great time to work on your outlook and how you cope with difficulties. Sport Walking challenges can be long and arduous and even the toughest, strongest and fastest Sport Walkers will face periods out on the trail not dissimilar to how most of us feel about the dullness of winter.

You’re maybe 60k into a 100km challenge, so despite already going for nine, ten or more hours, you still have at least another six left. Being able to rationalise this and find ways to stay focused and enthused by the process is difficult but essential. This simple process of finding a way not to give up because something is hard, literally defines human achievement.

So, working on your mindset during winter, will give you huge strength to cope with those parts of a challenge that are more of a psychological than a physical test. As the heading suggests, embrace the dullness of it all. Rejoice in this opportunity that you have to ‘test drive’ boredom and turn it to your advantage. See the potential in what might otherwise seem like a really uninspiring situation – the absence of excitement, of inspiring views, of warmth – view this as fertile ground for learning and development.

Listening to music and podcasts is a great distraction when there’s not a lot else to hold your attention out on the trail but it’s always good to view these as supplements, not your core coping mechanism. You need to be able to cope not escape, so try to develop tactics for being an active thinker during training and in challenges because that’s the framework that can transform dullness into richness.

When there’s not much to keep you engaged while you’re walking, become more active in your management of your situation. Focus on perfecting your technique while you walk, make calculations about your target pace and what your finishing time might be, go through your plan in your mind, refine your hydration and refuelling strategy, talk to yourself like a coach – actually speak about your commitment to make it through.

All these things are positive affirmations of your ability to succeed and are vital in a challenge because they keep you in the moment. You’re not trying to escape a boring period on the trail or a training session in bad weather, you’re actively using it to fuel your success – you’re working out and keeping check on what it will take you to succeed, which in itself assumes success!

So, embrace the dullness and see the opportunity to develop your coping mechanisms and to grow!

Focus on your base

Winter time is THE time to build your base fitness and, most importantly, your endurance and this means just going out and ticking off the miles. It may not be the most dynamic period of training but it’s essential, so understand that the work you do at this time is the best thing you can do.

By framing it in this way, you’re beginning to value winter itself – it’s not just that dull period between autumn and spring, it’s actually the most valuable time, the time where you can make the biggest transformation to your ability.  

The beauty of this time is that you can keep your Sport Walking sessions simple and highly enjoyable. You don’t need to do anything too specific, you can just go out and enjoy yourself on the trail, as long as you complete the mileage you need to complete. Just walk steadily for a good distance and this will build your fitness base, so that come the spring, when you need to become a bit more focused and include specialist sessions like hill work to build strength, you’ll be in great shape.

Keep exploring

The best way to alleviate the dullness of short winter days is to build interest into your walks, so try to go to new places or include points of interest, such as historical sites or beautiful viewpoints. The more you can build value into your walks, the more enjoyable and fulfilling they’ll be.

Use this time to discover new places, to walk new routes. Because your winter training will necessarily be more about building endurance rather than strength or speed, you can afford to try out new routes, which may have features that slow you down or hamper your progress because it’s more about completing distance than how fast you go.

So use this time to add to your trail network and to bank new routes that you’ll maybe want to revisit in summer. Go exploring and turn winter into a period of discovery.

Build your resilience

The very nature of winter time means it’s probably the best time of year to work on your resilience – to go out and do things you don’t enjoy. Days are short, so you can experience walking at night without staying out late. There’s more likely to be bad weather and even snow, increasing the opportunity to go out in challenging conditions to prove to yourself that you’re strong.

While these things are really useful to focus on, if you’re hoping to complete your training in daylight hours and in the dry, you’re going to be struggling to get much done at all during winter, so view this as taking advantage of the natural conditions of the season. 

What this means in practice is that if you place no boundaries on yourself, you’ll just go out and train when you planned, regardless of light levels or weather conditions and that will mean that some sessions will be dark, some will be wet but you’re just doing what you do! There’s nothing special about any of it, it’s all just part of what being a Sport Walker is but the growth you get from it all personally is huge.

You’re no longer phased by the rain or the dark, you just do what you need to do and nothing gets in your way!

Look ahead

Lastly, make sure that while you’re absorbing all the benefits of the short winter days we’ve listed above, you do also keep one eye on the approaching spring! Take heart from the changes in the days and enjoy them, just don’t fixate on them.

It’s easy to wallow in the interminable slowness of the progress of winter but after Dec 21st, every day is getting just a little bit longer, so think of yourself as being in a tunnel but you can see that spec of light ahead. Take encouragement from seeing that spec grow!

If you can take on board some or all of these tips, you’ll be able to get more out of the winter period and that in tern will mean that you can achieve more in your summer challenges which, after all, is what Sport Walking is all about!