The Internet Read my Mind (kinda).

I wrote this to myself not long after TransRockies. It sits in a spot in my 'draft' folder that means I see it every so often, but not every day…

"I have come to the realization over the last season or two that I put very high expectations on myself and then tend to not live up to those expectations on race day. When I don’t live up to those expectations during the race, I get a bit down. Negative even. Next season I’m going to try and turn over a new leaf and choose to be happy and positive on each race, no matter how the day plays out. No matter how much it hurts."

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure why, but that little thought has been on my mind a lot lately. In fact, Shane and I chatted about it quite a bit over the weekend while we were out running and biking. We talked about the fact that as a teenager I was soooo competitive ~ with myself, with others. I straight up just wanted to win. All.the.time. Now, I like training more than I like racing and in general, I think I’m a pretty non-aggressive person.

So yeah, somewhere along the way it seems I lost a bit of that competitive edge. Sure, I still like to challenge myself, and push myself and see what I’m capable of, but I feel like sometimes I lack the killer instinct or stubbornness to meet my lofty expectations. I think this often translates to me giving into the negative thoughts on race day.

Anyway, eerily enough, I came across two different posts/articles recently that I could really relate to. At times in each article, it was like the writers were in my head, articulating my thoughts and feelings better than I could ever articulate them myself.

The first one is here.

This line “Things I would never even think to say to another human being, much less one in pain, became perfectly acceptable to say to myself. Horrible, vile things blared between my ears with every step…” was eye opening.

Many of the things the writer was saying to herself were the same things that were running through my head during the marathon of IMC 2012. I felt like such a failure that day. I felt like I was letting down all of my friends and family who had come to watch by making them wait so long. It seems laughable now, but really, I felt like such a loser. The perspective the writer gave it, noting the fact that you would never say this to a friend (or a stranger for that matter), kind of hit the point home. I am realizing more and more that when the going gets tough, I tend to talk a bit negatively to myself. Obviously, this is something I need to work on.

The second post is here.

I can’t pinpoint one line that sticks with me quite as much as the previous entry, but I can definitely relate. I love training. Hell, I’ve said it many times before – I prefer training to racing. And, much like the writer of the above post, over the years I’ve come to realize that time trials or timed sets scare me. When I notice them in the calendar, feelings of nervous dread hang over me until I finally get the sucker over with.

I used to just tell myself the feeling of fear was “because it meant something to me.”  Which I do think is partly true. Of course, I want to see the improvements and gains that all my training has led to, but I also think it is a fear of [my own perceived] failure perhaps? Fear of a plateau, fear of not improving.

So, does this all relate back to my lack of killer instinct on race day? I dunno. Maybe.

What I do know is that I think it’s good that I’m becoming more aware of this and hopefully, as I get deeper into the training season, I’ll be able to acknowledge when/if I’m being hard on myself and when I just need to suck it up and dig deep. In turn, maybe I’ll find a little bit of that killer instinct that I somehow discarded a decade ago.