Saying yes to being your best at one thing invariably means saying no to something else. Probably a lot of something else’s. Specificity demands focus. It’s the price of expertise. This is no less true in fitness as it anywhere else. If you want to run a half-marathon PR or hit your highest deadlift weight, you’ll have to put most of your effort toward it. Other things will necessarily fall by the wayside, at least for a time. This should be obvious, but somehow it always sneaks up on me. Whenever I think about a goal I want to achieve, and start looking up plans on how to get there, I always ended up disappointed in how much of my time it’s going to take. I immediately start chafing against the required time sink. Running a fast half-marathon, for example, means running upwards of 5 or 6 times a week. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else. I’ve spent the last two years or so trying to stick to those kinds of plans (mostly running plans, chasing PR’s, either in distance or speed). I don’t usually succeed. But I keep trying. This summer, as I struggled with yet another half-marathon plan, I paused and tried to figure out what’s going wrong. Am I trying too much? Are my goals too ambitious for my current fitness level? Or something else entirely? What I’ve realized is that I just don’t really want to specialize. The idea of achieving those goals is not motivating enough to keep me adherent to a training plan for twelve or sixteen weeks. I get bored. I want variety. I crave all the other things I could be doing instead, and the end result is that I end up doing less than I would if I weren’t so single-activity focused. I like variety. All of my social media handles have the name Magpie, because I am easily distracted. “Oh, this is nice—-Ooh, shiny!” Pivot left. The list of things I can do every day or nearly every day and not get sick of is pretty short. I don’t know why I ever thought fitness would be different. It’s one of the reasons I was so happy at Crossfit. Today an EMOM with lots of body weight exercises. Tomorrow an AMRAP with barbells. Variety was built-in. Having figured this out is very freeing. Suddenly, the runs I didn’t want to go on are so much more fun because I don’t have to x miles at y pace. And if I’m not in the mood to run? I can go swim, or do a HIIT routine. I have options. All the options. Take the ‘have to’ out of it, and it swings back around to ‘want to’. And it also means I can fit in all those activities that fell by the wayside: yoga and rock climbing and biking. The world is my gym oyster. It’s been so long since I didn’t have a specific goal to work toward, and I’m looking forward to being a little more honest about what kind of goals I’m willing to sacrifice for. Because, ultimately, this journey isn’t about a half-marathon PR or an increasingly heavy power clean. It’s about using my body in ways that make it healthier with a view toward longevity and general health. That general health includes my mental health, which means not trying to pigeon-hole myself into a particular activity because I feel like I should. Will I ever go back to trying road race PR’s? Maybe in six months or a year I’ll start getting the itch But right now it’s just about feeling good, physically and mentally.