Full Circle

Let's face it.  Life ain't always what you think it's going to be.  Over the last 12 months of racing, my mental outlook has run the gamut and come full circle.  Not in a good way.  A year ago, I was preparing to race IM St. George.  I was super excited.  Training had gone well.  I had put in some long, hard miles on the bike.  My run was strong.  I was convinced I was going to crush it.

I was overconfident.  And I didn't have the mental preparation to back me up. 

On race day, the waves tossed me around like a sock in my overstuffed washing machine and the winds on the bike ripped apart my ego.  At 70 miles into the bike ride, I quit.  Walked off the course.

I'm not going to rehash the ins and outs of what happened before and after that, but needless to say I realized pretty immediately that my mental game needed some help.  Pronto.  I began to incorporate visualization into my daily routine.  Visualizing a pattern for race day, leading ultimately to me getting across the finish line.  No matter what.  I worked relentlessly, both in my physical preparation and my mental training leading up to IM AZ in November, and I executed the race of my dreams.

I was confident, and had the training and mental game in place to allow me to get through some rough spots in the day.

Again, I won't rehash every single detail, (*yawn*) but since November I spent much of the last 6 months battling fatigue to various degrees along with recurrent allergy and upper respiratory problems.  Much more so than I've ever encountered in the past.  There are certain things that I know to be contributing-- long hours and late nights at work in particular cause me to lose sleep, further compounding my growing anxiety.  And my lack of proper nutrition...cereal at 8:30 PM does not qualify as an appropriate dinner but when I'm exhausted at the end of the day sometimes it's a stretch to eat anything at all.

Now I'm facing the first of four Ironman races scheduled this year.  I am lacking all confidence in my abilities as I know my training has not been up to par.  I completely let my mental game slide after November and everything I worked so hard for (being able to talk myself out of a negative attitude) has completely gone down the drain.  In every long ride, I get angry that I'm going so slowly and I get mad that my fitness has disappeared and instead of being able to take a deep breath, and move on, I wallow in self-pity and grow more and more miserable by the minute.  I even bailed in the middle of a long bike ride and called a friend to pick me up-  first time in 4 years I've done that.

With 10 days to go, I'm resorting to drastic measures.  I'm looking for any little tidbit to cling to on race day that might allow me to make it to the finish line.  I am fully expecting this to be a learning experience.  As opposed to St. George, where the thought of quitting never crossed my mind prior to the race, I'm entering Texas knowing that every second is going to be one second longer than I thought I could do.  I will get through 140.6 miles because it is the only option I have.  I am finishing this Legacy program come hell or high water...  :-) A little irony for you.

The one trick that just might save me on race day... humor.  Stolen humor.  Borrowed humor.  But, whatever, right?  Those mental games in AZ were borrowed too.  On Sunday, we had a particularly nasty bike ride.  And by nasty I mean that my attitude was horrific and if I was my husband I A) wouldn't have biked with me and B) would have thrown my ass off the side of a mountain.  Thankfully, after allowing me to vent tolerating me venting, he made me laugh.  For some reason, it just seemed to do the trick.  I didn't become magically happy, but it did allow me to stop complaining for two seconds and just ride my frickin' bike.  And the rest of the ride went by uneventfully.  (Or at least I can't remember any more meltdowns after that.)

As we were getting ready to leave for lunch later that day, he grabbed the latest issue of Triathlete magazine, opened it to Jesse Thomas's article and said, "I'll drive, I want you to read this."  The article, written is Jesse's typical humorous style, was about what he called borrowing from the Get Screwed Fund.  He regaled the reader with stories of family vacations of his youth and how something inevitably went wrong.  Car trouble.  Hotel lost the reservations.  Whatever.  And his mom would say, it's OK, we're taking it out of the get screwed fund.  So in situations where it would be perfectly reasonable to be upset about something, there was no need.  It was already covered by the get screwed fund.  You could just relax, get through it, and move on.  No need to stress.

He went on to say how, when he was injured late in the season before an important race, his wife calmly suggested he take it out of the get screwed fund.  Rather than stress about lost training on the run, he was able to rest a little more, stretch a little more, and run a little less.  On race day, he was pretty well healed and at least had the opportunity to have a good race (which he did, by the way).

And in another report, Jesse made mention of a rough swim and feeling like he was swallowing a shit ton of water, being beaten up.  And then he reminded himself, "I eat fish, like, 2-3 times a week.  This is no big deal."  This seriously made me laugh.  Out loud.  At work.  When I should have been doing something other than reading his blog post.

Of course, I eat fish.  Duh.  So when I'm swallowing them whole in Texas, in the non-wetsuit swim where I feel like I'm drowning.... it's OK.  Cause I eat fish.  I'm going to work hard to keep this in my mind when I wish I was anywhere besides the lake in the Woodlands in the middle of a 4000 meter swim without a wetsuit.  I can swallow water, and it's OK.  I will be OK. 

I am taking a deep breath and I'm going to try to just let it all go.  The expectations.  The performance anxiety.  I have to let it go.  Arizona was not a one-time-gig, but it's also not an every-race either.  No one is placing expectations on me, besides myself, and I have nothing to prove.  I think that's the hardest thing I've had to realize.  No one cares.  For real.  12 hours 30 minutes.  10 hours 45 minutes.  No one cares but me. 

If you have any mantras or words of wisdom that get you through a tough race please share them with me.  I'm going to be borrowing from everyone to get through this first race of the season.  Then I can regroup and reorganize my thoughts before CDA. 

Final thought (stolen, again).  Do we train to race?  Or do we train to train?  Most of the time, I would say I prefer to train to race.  Meaning, if I need to cut back cause I'm too tired or change my plan for some reason, it's ok because the big picture is race day.  Right now, the race day seems pretty daunting and I think I'm better off focusing on the training to train.  Just enjoying what I'm doing in the moment and not worry about if I'm going fast enough or far enough. The training is stress relief.  It's what keeps me sane in my everyday life.  Though the race day normally feels like a reward, right now I think I just need to focus on enjoying the little benefits of my daily workout.