I’m not competitive with other people because I don’t love to compare my abilities with others’ for sport. I don’t really understand why that’s interesting. My competition is myself.

Over the last six years, that inward competitiveness has been mainly focused on running distance. In the last couple of months, it’s been on speed AND distance. Oops.

And now I’ve discovered that I’m hammering my runs so hard that I’m being inefficient. I’m not building consistent, repeatable speed and I’m not building fitness either. I hit 14km last week, which was great, but at a heart rate 20bpm higher than my last 14km a year before.

On researching, I realised that my 170bpm+ runs of over an hour are super not advisible. I mean…I had kind of wondered how anyone kept that up over a marathon. They don’t.

So last Saturday, I tried a new competition that reminds me of telling a child you’re going to play the QUIET GAME: can I maintain a zone-two heart rate for an entire run?

Turns out it’s hard because my brain is trained to push. But it’s lovely, to relax into a run and not be dying.

My natural, easy pace (didn’t think that existed) is a 7-minute km. That’s a 35-minute 5k, which is fine. The main thing is that I can maintain consistency of form and exertion, which will build my heart health.

I tried it and enjoyed myself enough to do it again the next day, but for 8km. It was…pleasant? By going back to basically my starting pace of six years ago, but with the fitness I have now, I can see how much stronger I am. I never would have thought then, gasping and shuffling, that I’d run 5k with a smile on my face. And then a smiley 10k the next Sunday – to the point that people walking past me thought I was being friendly. I’ve cracked running joy!

The lesson: more isn’t better here, scientifically. Faster, bigger – inefficient. I have to humble myself to my health and let go of always wanting to push harder. It’s a useful thing to accept.