Me vs. Myself

It's always a mental game.  My brain tells me yes, my body tells me no.  My brain tells me no, my body tells me yes.  My brain tells me no, my body tells me no, but I tell me yes.  Although last week was a recovery week, I missed too many workouts 3 + both core workouts but I had to work 5 days this week with most shifts ending at midnight or later and the internal dialogue that would play through my head every morning and every night consisted mainly of reasoning, coaxing, persuading, compromises and finally settling on a decision to carry out the day with or without the scheduled workouts.  If I missed a workout on a particular day though, I didn't mentally let it effect my other workouts.  It's too easy to beat yourself up over a missed session and let that negativity carry over to the next session.
Ultimately this mental dialogue is practice for race day.  My brain tells me I'm too tired as I lay in bed, but I have to tell myself that I do have the energy.  My brain tells me I feel sad and this isn't worth it while I grab my gear, but I tell me that I will feel great after and that this is worth it.  My body tells me I'm not strong enough as I do my workouts, but I tell my body I will get stronger.   My muscles burn telling me I don't have the endurance, but I tell my body to push through the sensations, to withstand them. 
Doesn't sound all too appealing does it?


Ironman is a long race and on race day my body will tell me that it is tired, my brain will tell me to stop, my muscles will be on fire but I will tell me that I can go on and that I will go on.  "Pain is only a state of mind.  There is no pain."  Anything can happen to set you back: GI problems, line-ups at porter potties, flat tires, bike accidents, goggles getting kicked off, IT band flare ups, dehydration, hypothermia, dropped water bottles and the list goes on and on.  Just like a missed workout, I can't let these set backs hold me back from giving 110% of my effort and finishing the race to the best of my ability.


Your brain can adapt, your body can adapt, but you have to tell you what you can and can not do; what you will and will not do.


We completed our second time trial at Peak Centre for Human Performance http://www.peakcentrevancouver.ca/  This involved riding bits and pieces of IMC's bike course on compu trainers along side fellow athletes.  The compu trainer alters and adjusts the resistance mimicking the flats, hills and slopes of the actual course and all the athletes are hooked up to one computer so we can actually race against one another.  There's even a big screen in front of us showing where we are on the course.  Kind of like that horse racing game at the PNE, where you feed a ball into numbered holes using a pinball machine like contraption and the more difficult a hole you get your ball into, the further along your horse moves, and all the horses move from one end of the screen to the other.  Well, anyways, I was racing with both new athletes as well as those from my first go last month and as weird as this may sound I had to force myself NOT to race against anyone else but myself.  It's only natural to compete against everyone cause we're all technically racing with one another, but instead of focusing on what place I was in, who was in front, who was behind or if I could catch up to whoever was in front, I focused on pushing hard, maintaining my rpm's (the speed of my pedal stroke) and effort and not giving into the burning in my lower body.  I was happy to see that I had finished 30 seconds faster then last month.


I might have missed some workouts here and there this month, but I'm getting faster, stronger and more focused.