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Thursday, October 8, 2009

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm writing this today instead of Friday because I have an odd sensation that I'm going to be throwing up all day tomorrow and I need to vent.

I'll confess: I'm nervous. No. A more accurate phrase would be I'm scared to death. I suppose my fear is that I won't finish. That a big DNF will be placed beside my name. Did Not Finish! On Saturday I'll put myself to the test, both mentally and physically and the thought of failure scares me. I know, I know: "Failure is not an option!" I've been telling myself that all day.

My problem stems from a lack of self-confidence. Three weeks ago I knew I could bike 112 miles because I did it. I knew I could run at least 20 miles because I did it. But after three weeks of tapering, running only 26 miles and biking only 160 miles in the past 2 weeks, my confidence is waning. And the fear of failure is consuming, at least today.

(My bike: All cleaned, polished and numbered. Ready for race day. It's black and white with a splash of colr here and there.)

I know it's all mental and I know my body will remember all the training. All the miles I've put on it, but today I feel like I've even forgotten how to ride my bike let alone ride it for 112 miles. In my mind, my body feels weak. Very weak. I feel like all my training over the past 10 months has left my body. My muscles are mush.

That's the mental side. On the physical side I know I've put in the training. Put in the miles, but the mental can outrun the physical like a pro can outrun this age grouper and looks good while he's doing it. And Ironman is mostly mental.

Fortunately, I'm an optimist and come Saturday I should be feeling the confidence that I'm lacking today. This tends to happen to me on every race: I feel confident training and then the taper comes and I forget how strong I am and all the hard work I've put into it and I start getting this odd, unfamiliar feeling. I think some people call it "REST" or "RECOVERY." Whatever it's called I'm not too familiar with.

Maybe my lack of self-confidence is really my body getting stronger through rest and not knowing what to do with all the energy it's building. Maybe the mental side is just taking a nap while my body refuels. That's easy to write about but less easy to believe - at least today.

1 comment:

Erin Miller said...

Randy,

We'll all be cheering you on tomorrow. Thanks so much for letting us use your blog for the paper this week. It was great. The Muscle Milk guys even came by looking for you yesterday because they were enjoying the series so much.

Good luck and have fun!

Erin

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