Wednesday, September 23, 2009

DIY Foundation Crack Repair

I'm failing to mentally process Redman. I can pinpoint the cause: lack of recovery from a 20mile run and metric bike the weekend prior. I can pinpoint the medical issue: chronic dehydration. But I can't deal with the mental issues, which are: 1) I wasn't sore or hurting (aside from shivering muscles) afterward, so I must not have been pushing that hard. 2) I've been doing this for long enough that I should know better, and I'm stupid for making these mistakes. 3) I have lost confidence that others are confident in me.

Right now, I feel like the slow zebra being eyeballed by the lion pack.

In a recent email, JM said
Make sure, no matter what else you do over the next 12 months, that you find at least one training day when you really get all hell bent for leather, only to have things go horribly wrong. Trust me - your race will have more than you can understand right now moments when you just want to crack. If you take time during your training to push yourself to that cracking point, and actually experience it first hand, when your times come on race day, you'll be able to accept it, understand it, and work through it. As opposed to letting it crush you and ruin your race. In retrospect, I think this was my key to finishing vs/ DNFing. I knew my crack inside and out, and when it came to me out on the bike course, I was ready for it.

Find your crack. Embrace it. Learn it. Study how it affects you mentally, emotionally, physically. How does it change your race day strategy? Your training strategy? Your athletic outlook? The more you train WITH it, as opposed to just knowing on paper what you think it is, the better your ability to keep it from taking over your race.

I will keep this in mind as I recover from Redman. I will embrace my crack (!?). I will process it, put it behind me, yet keep it in mind as the next year passes. I will put aside the odd pride I have in the fact that I finished a race I shouldn't have, and I will instead focus on the fact that a crack has been exposed in time for me to repair it.

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