Negative Speak & Limits

On Sunday, I was starting the second of my back-to-back 3-hour run days, and I thought to myself, "I can't do this, I've never done this. This is crazy." And it dawned on me that even before I tried, I had already placed limits on myself through negative speak. I then recalled some of my blog posts prior to races, and I realized there were a lot of negative speak. For example, I wrote about the possibility of bonking, walking, and not nailing my nutrition. Also, friends would email me telling me to crack 10 hours or race fast, and I would respond with a lackluster, "hopefully I won't bonk." Compare this to the words Charisa emailed me prior to her race at Challenge Henley, "My goal is to win on Sunday...Last day in Wales tomorrow - then off for London, on to Henley and some very hard racing and work to be done. Got to show those UK girls that us USA chicks are tough cookies and can't be written off :)" Charisa went on to place second, 50 seconds shy of the W, and PR'ed her ironman by 19 minutes.

I spent a lot of time during my run dissecting my season, and how the negative speak could have placed limits on my performance. I finally decided that when I go back to racing, I'm going to liken my racing season to a house with no roof; there will be no ceiling to limit how high I can go, and I want to be able to see and reach for the stars. And as corny as it sounds, I really thought of this metaphor during my run and before I knew it, I was finishing up my second day of a 3-hour run. Before Sunday, I had never run 46 miles in two days, but that's because I never tried.

Test Taking

You have no doubt heard of the term nervous nelly, but I want to introduce you to negative nelly, the alter ego I took on today during my ride. After an awesome swim workout with my team, probably my best of the season, I was at lost as to why negative thoughts kept creeping in my head during the ride.

I'm training too much. I'm training too little. Oh hell, I have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm not doing enough speed work.
I'm not cut out for the ironman distance, there's no way I can go under 10 hours. I'm backing out of IM CDA and IM Canada.

It's been a frustrating start to the season. It's like I'm doing all of the homework but still failing the test. I'm actually not that surprised. I graduated high school with a 4.3 GPA but if you looked solely at my SAT score, you'd think that I spent my entire time in high school cutting classes and smoking behind the gym. And then there were my friends who never did their homework, and they aced the SAT. I used to half-jokingly say, "I'm not smart, I just work really hard." It appears I'm reliving high school all over again.