I think I really have to keep this here as a reminder to myself of the fact that I love going out and pushing myself and doing my best and sometimes exhaustion and stress and pressure get in the way of that and makes me lose sight of this. I need to try to hold onto this mentality when I'm in the midst of working hard because at the end of the day, it's important that these pursuits add to my life instead of take away from it.
Today was an easy easy warm up before the main event tomorrow:
Today's Workout: Easy 3-5 mi. run.
Summary: 3.17 mi, 29:27, 9:17 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:25, 9:18, 9:13, 8:55.
Hit rate: 18/20 (90%)
I was happy with the pace even though it felt a little more strenuous than I think it realistically should have. I'm fairly happy with what food intake looked like today given that I had to eat out for a lot of the day just because of the way timing/life worked out (noodles for dinner = big plus) and I've been loading up on potassium Vitamin Water (fruit punch) the past few days and am having a Nuun right now. Tomorrow morning I'll have another Vitamin Water and pocket some Nuun in case I decide I want it. The plan will be an early breakfast at Timmy's (bagel carbs!) and either one or two gels in the lead up to the run (TBD depending on what my fluid intake looks like and how I feel). I'm really pumped!
In other news, it's been really interesting to think about how I've been feeling about racing in the lead up to this race. Here are the three big things:
(1) I'm really inexperienced at running races still. With swimming, I know my pre-race routine down to the dot in terms of how early I like to wake up, what I like to eat, what I do for general warm up and pre-race warm down and cool down, how to rest between events, and exactly how my events should feel as I'm swimming them. I have so much experience that I can turn my brain off the entire day basically and autopilot will take care of it. I don't have that with running yet, so I'm still learning and it feels like there's a lot of uncertainty and nerves. That'll get worked out with experience though, so I just have to keep racing until the routines become familiar.
(2) Related to me being inexperienced is that I somehow have this sense that I need to rely on things like diligently watching my pace in order to run the best possible race. But in swimming I've never really thought about my splits while racing. The focus is always on just racing my best possible race. Because unless I execute close to perfectly, I don't have a chance at PBs. I think I need to develop this mentality with running and triathlon races as well. It's not about splits or whatever, it's about executing on controllables like technique and moderating effort and rest/preparation, etc. If a PB falls out of that, great. If it doesn't, then it wasn't going to just because I was looking at my watch the entire time. PB races depend on the best possible execution, and there is much more to that than what my splits are going to look like tomorrow. I'm going to try my best to just focus on executing and not worry too much about what time drops out of that execution.
(3) It's nice to know that this race is just a stepping stone in the grand scheme of my training. I guess everything that I do between now and what will hopefully be USAT Collegiate Club Nationals in the spring is really just a stepping stone. The races in September will carry some real weight though, whereas this one really is almost just a hard tune-up training session. The September races are the first real tests of how well I can handle the Olympic distance. This race is almost like just a high intensity long run that's meant to help me develop my running in the lead up to the later triathlons. The result in and of itself doesn't matter to me as much as it usually would because either I will PB and be ecstatic or I won't and it will still have been a really meaningful part of my training and building up towards being able to run the best 10k I can at the end of what I know will be a tough event for me distance-wise. It's exciting to run a race with a more casual mentality.
Another quick note: I didn't sleep as well as I would have liked last night, but I did take a nap in the middle of the day today and plan on going to bed in about 15 minutes so I should have lots of ZZZs in the bag for tomorrow. Going to go lay everything out and stretch briefly and brush my teeth and get all set up and ready to go. Wish me luck! (Also: YAY 90% HIT RATE!)
Much love,
Jess
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