I used to be able to run 5-10 miles a day.
I took a break for a few years (almost a decade), and now I can barely manage to run 2-3.
It isn't that I am accepting that I am out of shape, it is that I am actively trying to do something about it. That means that I have to appreciate the milestones that come between barely being able to run to my refrigerator, to running the distance that I want.
Being happy that I can run a tiny bit farther today than I could yesterday is good, and it motivates me to run farther tomorrow.
I doubt I would be able to endure the pain of the process if all I saw is how far I am from running 10 miles a day. There isn't a way to speed up the process substantially; I have to put in the work, get back in shape, lose weight, eat better, drink more water, and endure the soreness in the meantime. I can tell anyone I want that I used to be able to run a half marathon on a whim, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't do it now.
So, using that illustration, while I believe that we under-performed by 2 games under Jones (Mizzou and Vandy), I also saw some improvement that I haven't seen in several years (we cut the under-performance we have seen recently in half) and we beat a ranked team since God-knows-when. So while the end results from 2012-2013 don't look dissimilar, the substance of the results do. Improvement wasn't visible to those who see how short we are of running the marathon, but they are to those who see that we were better off than we were last year although we didn't run any farther.
I believe this point is illustrated with charts/graphs and figures here:
If I Bleed Orange, I'm Bled Out: Maybe next year (a season wrap).
