Damn That Little Voice In My Head

My last post mentioned that I was planning to do a local 5K and test some mental race tactics I’d read about. I don’t how else to put this other than that the experiment was a failure – disappointing….but I’m going to let it go.  As with anything in life, things don't always work out the first time you try them.

I discovered that there are essentially two mental strategies used by runners. The first is based on association - you focus on the changes in your body during the race - i.e., breathing, pain and fatigue. Focusing on these cues help you to deal with the discomfort of racing and hold your pace.  In contrast, disassociation is all about distracting oneself from these sensations. This can be done by listening to music, counting the black cars you pass, playing an alphabet game in your head and so forth.

I decided to try out the association method for my local 5K (which is how most elites approach their races)…. not that I'm considering myself elite ;-).

The first mile went well - I was feeling good and was right on pace. But during mile 2 that voice in my head began to suggest that I slow down or even walk for “a bit.”  I tried the associative technique and focused on why the voice in my head was complaining.  It was hot, humid and I was struggling to hold my target pace… I tried to remember that this was a race and it was supposed to hurt- and frankly, I wasn’t in so much pain that I should be reduced to a walk. It was only a 5k and I should have been able to push through this very brief – and expected – rough patch.

Bottom line?  I took five short walks during the last mile and a half of this 3.1mile race – finishing 35^th overall, first in my age group and holding a  7:45 pace.  I lost the mental battle and ultimately talked myself out of performing my best.  Not the first time this has happened in my life.

I was disappointed….yes – but let me wrap this post on a very positive note. It turns out a friend of mine was also racing that day.  She is a remarkable woman (I mentioned her in my Goals post) and we had a lovely chat after the race. And, since I had given her an extensive list of recommendations of things to do on her recent trip to Paris, she brought me back the most beautiful butterfly scarf.   That disappointed look on my face was immediately replaced with a huge smile. 

Keeping the Momentum

It’s been four days since I competed in my sprint triathlon. I’ve barely trained all week and am starting to feel kind of crappy. I’m not going to lie, this is a pattern I’ve seen in myself before; I train for a race and then immediately fall off the wagon.

I’m all for giving the body a rest from time to time but I am not a fan of doing nothing for too long. Not training obviously affects me physically but it also messes with my emotional state of mind. So in an effort turn this around, I’ve found a 5K to race this weekend.

The course for this 5K is one that I did a few months ago when I placed third in my age group and ran a 7:33 (23:35). My goal for this race is to beat that time. The conditions are going to be very hot so I’m going to be conservative - I’m aiming for a 7:25 pace.

I’m going to use this race to test out some mental racing tactics. Although I’ve never focused on psychological preparation before a race, I know that it’s just as important as the physical part. I’m tired of getting out there and fighting with the thoughts in my head trying to talk me out of racing my best. How can I how push out those negative thoughts  (i.e., I’m not that great of a runner, Those people look so much fitter than me, This hurts so I’m just going to walk) and fill my mind with positive ones ? I want to be the one in control of my mind not the reverse.

Quite honestly, I’m sure discovering what strategies work for me would not only be useful in running but in life in general. I’ve found myself many times where I’ve got a large project in front of me, a presentation or some task that is challenging me and my negative self talk gets the best of me.

Off to do some research… if you’ve got any suggestions or things that work for you, feel  free to comment. 

Success! Lake Lanier Sprint Triathlon Recap

My second Athleta Lake Lanier Sprint Triathlon is over. I’m enjoying a nice day off with no pressure of a race looming over me. 


The day before the race my anxiety started kicking in. I started having pre-race jitters and feeling like my race goals were too aggressive. I felt fit from other training but I was worried no bike and pool training would hurt me. It turns out it didn’t matter - my overall time was only 1 minute slower than last year. Upon reflection, my training while not affecting me physically likely hurt me mentally.  If I had put in those hours on the bike and in the pool I definitely would have felt more confident during the race.

The mental part of competing is very hard for me regardless of my training. During races I always seem to be having little fights in my head - trying to convince myself that walking or slowing down is ok. I KNOW that running a race with this mindset is completely counter productive. My gut tells me that the mental game accounts for at least half of how well you perform. I’m going to devote some time to conquering this over the next few months. And really that's one of the reasons I started this blog -  to figure out some things about myself.

Here's a brief recap of how things played out at the race.

As usually happens with me, I went into race morning having only slept 30 minutes. Yes, that's right 30 minutes. I always have lots of anxiety about having to wake up very early so my body decides to just stay up. Either way, after a pre-race Diet Coke, I was feeling pretty good. I was ready to give it my best shot. The only thing I worried about was encountering a mechanical problem (leaky goggles, bike troubles) because I hadn’t used my equipment in so long.


I was the 6^th wave to take off so this allowed me time to watch the other swimmers and have nice conversations with some ladies in my age group. I love this race because it is all women and the feeling of camaraderie is awesome. I took off into the lake with positive expectations. However, this feeling quickly went downhill when we hit the water and everyone seemed to be swimming so much faster than me. It wasn’t a great way to mentally start the race.

On the bike, I felt stronger. I focused on passing as many people as I could - giving myself a mental high five each time I cruised by someone with a 40 – 44 on their calf. In my early 30's I spent a fair bit of time on the bike so I feel fairly confident on my bike.

The transition from bike to run was hard - I felt stiff and my legs felt heavy. I don’t remember feeling this way last year. My husband thinks it could be from lack of brick training. (This is when you train doing two or three of the sports back to back as you would on race day.)  I kept hoping my body would kick into gear during this short run but I never got into a speedy cruise where I felt like I was a runner. Funny thing is that I ran a pretty good pace but it felt very slow.

After the race, I sat in the athletes breakfast/recovery area and had some great conversations with some of the other participants. Not only was I glad to be done with the race but I sure do appreciate some ME time without two little girls demanding my attention. I felt good about my performance and it was an interesting non-planned experiment in training (or I should say, non-training) for me. Not sure how I’ll train next year but I’m definitely doing this race again.

Final Results

2012

Place: 91/1038 (9%)

Age Group: 31/261 (12%)

Time: 1:50:45

Swim: 15:13

Bike: 1:06:55 (17.0 pace)

Run: 23:00 (7:40 pace)

2011

Place: 59/1008

Age Group 18/205

Time: 1:49:40

Swim: 12:07

Bike: 1:08:45

Run: 23:42

Goals

I was recently asked to write down some of my successes in life and I really struggled to do so. Anything I came up with, didn’t feel particularly genuine. I’ve thought about this a good deal and have concluded that (for some reason) I have a hard time bragging about myself - even when asked to do so.

One thing that I recognize is goals and success are related to me. For a person who doesn’t like to toot her own horn (and I do realize the importance of feeling and knowing that you are good at something), I’ve decided that setting and reaching a goal could be good way to clearly identify a success and feel comfortable acknowledging it.

On a side, yet related note, I met a pretty remarkable woman one time at a running club here in Atlanta. During our long run she shared a few glimpses into how she conducts her life. It struck me as hard core, very cool, and incredibly disciplined. Basically, she runs her personal life like a business with a set ‘business plan’. She establishes all of her goals for the year and then actually reviews where she is at each quarter. I believe she even sets aside days for meetings with herself. There’s a ton more to it than this but the whole process seemed very well thought out. It was also quite clear that she makes a concerted effort not to neglect herself which I’m sure would be super easy to do when you consider that she heads up International Human Resources at a large company AND has two young boys at home.

As part of an effort to work on some things about myself, I’ll be setting some goals (racing and non-racing related) and to get started – I’m going to set a goal right now.

This weekend I will be racing the Athleta IronGirl Lake Lanier Sprint Triathlon for the second consecutive year. While I have not trained like I did last year, here are my goals:

•  Have fun and finish
•  Match (or beat) last year’s time
• Be in the top 15%  (not a great goal because this is somewhat out of my control…)

PS: Four days until race day and my bike is still sitting in the basement from last year. I think it's time to take it out and brush off the cobwebs. Hopefully my mental game can make up for the lack of swim/bike training. More on that later...

What do you hear when you run?

On 9 out of every 10 runs, I don’t listen to music.  I love music as much as the next person - but I find it distracting (and actually a little irritating).  I’m seemingly always bored with my music library and find myself constantly clicking to the next song. It also becomes yet another thing I have to worry about before my workout  - where are my headphones, do I have the right playlist loaded, and so forth.

When I’m running outdoors, I simply prefer to focus on what I’m out there to do…run.  I like to soak up the scenery and get some much-needed “thinking” done. I do this best as the miles pass.  I’m able to tune out all of the distractions, get into a rhythm and let my mind take me wherever it wants to go.

I completely understand how many people would never run without music….I get it. And the thought of my running without music probably sounds a little crazy. Ah well, to each his own.

I do however; have an opinion about racing with music. I’m not even sure if it’s allowed but I feel that races should be without any headphones/ipods. To me, a race should be about you, your sneakers pounding the pavement and being focused on the pain of running hard!

Are there any other folks out there who prefer to run without music?

My Piggy Bank

There are some days and even weeks when fitting a workout into my schedule seems overwhelming. And when I get overwhelmed....sadly, I find it too tempting to just take the easy way out and choose to do nothing. I’m trying to turn that around with a much more positive, ‘anything is possible,’ attitude.

My husband, who has done Ironman twice, often tells me to think of my body as my own personal piggy bank. Each time you train you are dropping in coins. On race day, you dump out that piggy bank and put all your ‘savings’ into the race. So this week I thought of that metaphor a lot....and while I wish I could have been dropping in quarters with longer and harder workouts, I just dropped in a lot of pennies, nickels and a few dimes.  It all counts!

Let me give you two examples of how I made it work.

I had a conference at my daughter’s school scheduled right smack in the middle of my morning. It would have been easy to say "well I don’t have enough time to train today, so I’ll just skip it." Rather, I broke up the workout and put in 2.6 miles before the conference and an additional 2.6 miles afterwards.

Another day, I had a crazy number of errands but I was able to log a quick 3 mile run after the last chore was done. Here's how - I ran from my daughter’s school to ensure that I would not be late for carpool. Later in the day, I took the girls to the nursery at the gym and got in a quick 500 meter swim. Again, these were all mini workouts but workouts nonetheless. Cha ching!

Mommy's Uniform

My girls are at the age where they are starting to grasp the concept of time and schedules.  I'm often being drilled with questions in their first attempt to make some sense of the world. 'What day is today? And then what comes after Wednesday? And what comes after that?' And now they are starting to put events to these days. 'On Monday Daddy go to work. Tuesday we go to school. Friday we get pizza. Sunday I go to soccer.' The list is endless. And when they add me to the equation, at no particular point, they typically say, 'And Mommy goes running.' 

In the mornings, on the way to carpool, I usually hear a little voice from the back seat asking, 'Mommy are you going to your exercise class? Or, Mommy are you going running?' It's kind of a silly question in my mind because I'm sitting up there in full workout gear, but then again, it seems at least 6 out of 7 days I'm in my running clothes so how are they to know the difference.

Working out has been an important part of my life - some years less so. With the first few years of mommy-hood under my belt, exercise is starting to take a greater importance in my life again -- hence the new 'uniform'. I find that athletics are good for my self confidence and general well being. I also find that it helps me to have balance in my life - I'm the type that can easily put myself last. 

I would describe myself first as a runner but I cross-train too, to avoid injuries and boredom. To keep motivated and committed, I try to have a goal or a race in the future. My biggest race this year is the ING New York City Marathon. This will be my first marathon. 

In this blog, I will take you on the journey of my training and hopefully motivate some of you along the way by sharing the ways I figure out how to get it all done. As any mom knows, finding the time to do anything for yourself is challenging, particularly when your kids are in pre school and you have three hours to jam in errands, laundry, housekeeping and oh yeah, a run.