Do you ever feel pressure? Do you compare yourself to others? Do buy things because someone else has those same?
It’s easy to compare yourself others, especially nowadays as you can see runners everywhere. Social media is one of the worst places to get low self-esteem. Scrolling down to Instagram and see how others have an amazing body and they are fast runners. Popular runners and post are full of comments that admire them and people want to be like them, people are sad that they don’t have something that others have, they spend their energy to worrying what others have and they don’t have.
You should never feel less worthy than others. You should never compare yourself to others or want their life. How many those Instagram account tells the whole story, how many really show skipped workouts, bad workouts, the years that they have been working out. Social media is full of glamour, it rarely shows all the hard work behind success. It doesn’t show other personal problems or low self-esteem or anything really.
Many people making money with social media, and there’s nothing wrong about it, as long as you remember that someone of those who are sponsored or marketing products are not necessarily using them by self, or those products might not be suitable for you. This is a big problem, especially with running shoes. Everyone uses Nike, right? No.
Above is the list the most selling running shoes, it’s from Fueledbylolz newsletter, whose working in running shoe store in the USA and the list mostly present the USA market, but you can still see Nike is not the most popular brand. I don’t say that Nike doesn’t make high-quality running shoes, all those on the list produce amazing shoes, and there are other brands too, which I say some brands use more money in the marketing are better known than others. Your job as the runner is the find good shoes for your feet, not the one that is the most advertised.
How about marathon times?
Men’s average finishing time of a marathon: 4:15:13 and women’s average finishing time of a marathon 4:47:14, so most of the runners are not even run sub 4:00, not to mention sub 3:00. If you want more running statistic to click this link and read runner click article about 2019 running statics.
Don’t compare yourself to popular social media runners or feel ashamed if you don’t run sub 3:00 marathon or if you don’t run marathons at all. You don’t need to share each running every social media, have thousands of followers, have high tech equipment or anything that others have. These don’t make yourself less runner than others, as long as you are running you are RUNNER!