It seems that every race I’ve set a time goal, I did not meet it and then I was very unhappy with myself and my day. These are the types of time goals where I calculate what I think I can do if I push myself and maybe subtract a minute or two to get to a nice even number. Then there are races where I have the attitude of “I think I can do at least this so I’ll hope to do somewhere around that”. I told myself this race would be for fun, to see what I can do, not for time. Even so, I keep calculating various speeds and paces to see what time I might be able to hit. STOP! I need to stop! I know I’m incapable of not having SOME time in my mind. Instead I’m just having a time I’d be very happy to be under but mostly it’s a time that gives me a general idea of how long I’ll be out there racing and also so my husband knows when to expect me. It’s not a goal time. 7 hours… I think I can do it, I hope I can do it, but if not, then I’ll know that my abilities at that moment are not enough for under 7 hours. No biggy, plenty to improve on for my next race.
There are two main aspects that make up an athlete’s
abilities: physical and mental. This race is all about the mental side for me.
Not to see how hard I can push myself, that’s for another day, another race. I
want this to be a happy race. A place I can find peace. A race where I can find
confidence that I can do this. Because I. Can. Do. This. This is a small race
so I expect to be alone a lot. It will be just me and my thoughts for many
hours. Hours of opportunity to doubt myself. This day I will test myself
mentally. This weekend I had a lot of opportunities to test my race pace/effort
and there were a lot of thoughts that went like “there is no way I can hold
this effort for 56 miles”. That will be my battle out there. Bring it on.
“Your body can stand almost anything. It's your mind that
you have to convince.”
3 days until my first 70.3…
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