First Race of Season Three!

First Race of Season Three
April 27, 2015

FIRST RACE OF SEASON THREE

Tomorrow is the first race of season three.  I am so excited that I can hardly stand it.  My husband just laughed at me and said, “Settle down!”

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to explain my emotions and I just can’t.  This morning, I woke up and burst into tears.  I don’t know why.  Something to do with the season being here and not feeling ready physically or emotionally.

I’m all over the place emotionally.  At times, I think about how far I have come, how many people have “been there” for me over the past two years.  All the encouragement at the office as they’ve helped me shave 16-hour work days into 9-hour work days (on most days), kind words from my Facebook friends, random remarks from complete strangers – and I get all choked up.  And then I think about my family, my wonderful sons who took the time to run 5K’s with me when I was beginning and my saintly husband who has eaten dinner at 9:00 pm day after day so I could train and served as my triathlon Sherpa – happy to help me succeed. And to add to that, a wonderful, goofy, sensitive coach who knows what he's doing.  I mean, how blessed can one person get?

Blessings.  In a strange way, triathlon has renewed my relationship with God in an extremely significant way.  In the beginning, it felt losing weight was my doing.  But somewhere, this became something that was not my doing.  I began to sense that I am a passenger on a journey that God has set before me.  My son who is studying to be a pastor was the first person to point this out to me.  Then, out of the complete blue, my coach said in an email, “God loves you, just the way you are.”  I haven’t figured out why, out of all the overweight people in the world, I have been blessed with this journey.  I know there is some reason and I am listening.  In my Episcopal / Catholic upbringing, we don’t shout, “Praise the Lord.”  But, I often say quietly, “I know this is you, Lord. Thank you,” and I strive to listen to what He is saying to me.

When I think about all of this, I am so deeply moved that I could easily turn into a blubbering idiot.  However, blubbering takes energy, and right now, I need to be a tough as nails.  So my thoughts now are limited to strong thoughts. The mantra that I’m taking into tomorrow’s race is, “You are strong,” as stated by Dave Ripley at 51 Speedshop.  When Dave was doing my bike fit, I think he felt like he had to justify the more aggressive fit he was giving me.  He said several times, “You are strong.  It would be an injustice to you to not give you this fit.”  It was so cool that Dave “got” that I wanted to race in the worst way and that triathlon was not just recreational.  It was so cool that he wanted to support my desire for speed with an aggressive fit.  And it was so, so cool that he said I was strong and could handle a more aggressive fit. He saw something in me that my coach had also said, but I wasn't believing yet. Pretty cool.

As I write this, I am in the car on my way to packet-pick-up with my black 51 Speedshop t-shirt on. I wore it because it makes me feel "badass!"

Another mantra I'm taking into this race is “Opportunity.”  My coach and I had a wonderful talk last week about mental preparation and I’ve been doing some reading online.  One author said that rather than saying, “This is going to be a hard workout / race,” or “This is going to be a challenging workout / race,” an athlete who is mentally tough would say, “This is an opportunity.”  So, when things get tough, I will tell myself, “This is an opportunity to show what I am made of.” 

I did a workout earlier this week with swim pace goals that I thought were way beyond my ability.  In a not-so-helpful manner, I was really ticked at my coach for giving me something I couldn’t possibly do.  In the middle of the first impossibly fast interval, the lactate acid started building in my muscles and it basically, hurt a LOT.  I was inhaling on breaths but it didn’t seem to make a difference.  There was no air and I was gasping with each breath.  I was so mad and frustrated that I started chanting, in time with my stroke rhythm, “You suck.  You suck. You suck.”  (Note:  Suck is not a word I normally use.).  Then, the word “opportunity” popped in my head.  I asked myself, “What are you DOING?!!”  This is an OPPORTUNITY to show what you are made of.  I was amazed that after that attitude change, it didn’t hurt so much.  I was tough.  I was showing what I was made of.  I finished that interval and was astounded to see that I beat my coach’s pace goal.  After that, it was easy to muster the grit to tackle the remaining intervals which were each faster than the one before.  Morals of this story:  1) Attitude makes a HUGE difference.  2) My coach knows what he’s doing.

Rambling on . . . 

Tomorrow is a “C” race.  That means we aren’t doing much special to get ready for this race.  It’s just another day of training and maybe more importantly, a rehearsal for my A race (USAT Sprint Nationals) in August.  I did taper a bit the last two days and I have no workout today, but for an A race, I would have tapered for a week.  I am more “beat up” than I normally am prior to a race – just not feeling especially fresh.  However, I have now learned that there is no such thing as a C race in my mind.  There is no way that I can think of a race as a C race.  In my mind, this is an A race.  You know how some race horses are so eager to go that the jump all around in the start gate? That’s me.  Let’s go! Let's race!

No matter how I do tomorrow, I will be proud to be at the start line with a sound off-season behind me. My goal during the off season was to do whatever my coach told me to do and to pay attention to every little detail. 

While not perfect, I am proud of the degree to which I pulled that off.

------

I’d like to point out one more thing as I go into season three:  I used to be a size 5x or 6x.  This week, I purchased a jacket in a bike shop that was a Medium Pro Fit. Grin, grin, grin!  I’ve decided to continue to loose a bit more weight to see how I feel (maybe 5-10 pounds more), but I’m going to do so at a slower pace. My coach is working me harder now that we’re in build phase and I want to make sure that I’m losing fat and not muscle.  This week, I started eating more carbs so my muscles will store more glycogen.  I hope to start working with my sports performance dietician next week to get a solid plan.

And off to pick up my race packet. Woohoo!