The Perfect Chocolate Cake – The Perfect…?
Out of the oven comes the most delicious, mouth watering chocolate cake! You can’t wait to serve a slice up and start to devour your creation. But how did you do it? No doubt you followed a recipe. First of all you would have checked you had all the ingredients, then you would have precisely followed the method outlined by the recipe. Following this recipe allowed you to immediately become an expert in the kitchen and bake the perfect chocolate cake.
But what would life have looked like with out the recipe to follow? What ingredients would you add? How much of each would be needed? In which order would you add them? How would you mix them together? There would be a lot of guesswork going on, you might end up with something that resembles a cake but it certainly wouldn’t be the award winning cake that you are after.
What you may not have realized is that you follow plans every day of your life; often without even realizing it because you have followed them so many times before. Google maps gives you a plan to get from A to B. That to do list is a plan of how you would like to get things done. You see the physio for a plan on how to return to the sport you love.
Following a plan allows you to be successful. You get to learn from all the mistakes of others, they allow you to fast track your success. Absolutely you can go it alone and turn out dud cake after dud cake as you make slow painful progress towards your goal.
Running is no different. Following a plan guarantees your success because you get given a recipe to follow. You know, exactly what ingredients you need, exactly how much of each is needed and exactly the right order to mix them in. This is the benefit of a planned lead into an event.
Many plans you simply create in your head and never even write them down. But for more complex things we need to write them down and follow them step-by-step making modifications, as we need along the way. The benefits of this are many but the four main ones are,
- A plan saves time.
- A plan saves failure.
- A plan guarantees long-term results.
- A plan ensures your success.
I’m not sure about you but I love achieving big things in life and make sure I plan for each of them. If I don’t need a plan I know I’m not extending my comfort zones.
So the question to ask yourself; ‘If you don’t need a plan are you truly extending your comfort zone?’
It’s up to you, but I dare say, it’s time to get planning!
Enjoy the adventure.
Run, smile and have fun!
Nick Muxlow
Author | Speaker | Coach
Running an ultra marathon is challenging. Personalised training plans and coaching from The Ultra Journey make it easy to run your best ultra.
Nick can be reached on nick@theultrajourney.com