Tag Archives: discouragement

A Mental Game

16 Feb

I have to admit that the humbling experience of last Sunday’s race has sort of taken the wind out of my sails. It’s not surprising I guess. Just like I can have a runner’s high for the week after I blow my race expectations out of the water, I can also have a runner’s low for a week after failing yet another half marathon PR attempt (and getting my butt kicked in the process).

Travis and I are registered for the Snowman Stampede 5 mile race this Saturday. Part of me is hoping for redemption. Flat course and temp in the low 30s? You’ve got this. Part of me doesn’t even care. I’m slow. I suck. So be it.

After we busted out 2 miles on Tuesday night in 19:57 (say what?), Travis told me that he thinks my problem is mental. I am able to run faster than I give myself credit for.

I agree that running is a mental sport. You don’t come by a PR easily – you have to fight, dig deep, lay it on the line, and cry tears of simultaneous joy and pain. And in those last miles of a tough race,  my mental state often gets the best of me. I have loads of negative thoughts running through my head:

I can’t do this.

This is too hard.

It doesn’t matter anyway.

Why the f*** am I doing this? 

During the race on Sunday, I was battling those thoughts from the start line.

It’s too cold.

I can’t breathe.

My legs won’t move!

I have 13 miles to go?!?!

Even during my run with Travis on Tuesday, I was holding myself back with negative thoughts.

I can’t run this fast.

My legs are going to wear out.

I’m going to burn out after a mile.

According to iMapMyRun though, I ran the first mile in 10:09 and the second mile in 9:48.

Which makes me tempted to say that Travis is right – I can run faster than I think. But I have to say, after years of being disappointed by my running pace and missing race goals left and right, I allow myself to ask the lurking question I haven’t wanted to acknowledge – Why do I spend so much time on a sport that I’m bad at? Why do I have a hobby that makes me frequently feel insufficient and incompetent?

As I’m staring down this goal of a marathon, and preparing to start training for real next week, I feel scared. Unsure. Do I really want to do this? I’d be lying if I said I just wanted to finish. I want to reach a goal. I want a time I can feel good about, even if only in my own eyes.

There are days when I can graciously accept that I just was not created to be fast. Then there are other days when it makes me frustrated. Discouraged. And I question why I do this in the first place.

I think every runner, no matter how fast or slow, gets to this place. The place where pace, cadence, distance, races, and goals fall flat and you have to go back to square one: reminding yourself why you run. Most runners I know don’t run because they love winning. Or because they love beating other people. They run because they love it, pure and simple.

So that’s where I am. Reminding myself that I run for the love of it. No matter how slow I go, no matter how much I walk, no matter how many minutes tick by past my goal, no matter how “poor” of a runner I feel like, I’m out there because I love running.

Why do you run?

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Feeling discouraged.

16 May

On Friday, I officially registered for the Boulder Sunrise Triathlon on June 4th. That means I have 3 weeks left and only 2 to really train (the last week will be a taper). I have to admit, I’m feeling kind of discouraged. Even though I’ve been diligent in training 4-5 days a week (missing only 1 workout a week), I am worlds away from where I was 2 years ago. I had expected that getting a real tri bike would make me faster on the bike, but no, I am just as slow or slower than I was on my mountain bike.

On Saturday, I finally bought a bike trainer so that I can ride my tri bike indoors. I tried it out last night for the first time – I decided to do my 15-mile ride while watching the season finale of Desperate Housewives (which was very good, BTW). I realized after I started that I should have done a little research or watched the training video before attempting a ride of that length on a contraption I barely know how to operate but there wasn’t time for that. So I just jumped on and hoped for the best.

It was brutal. I was ready to be done after just ½ mile. I had my bike gears set on the smallest big cog and the middle of the small ones but I was still only going 8.5 mph. I’m pretty sure an 8-year-old on a 1-speed bike can ride faster than that. After 3 miles of torture, I seriously contemplated throwing in the towel. But I really needed to ride 15 because the bike leg of the triathlon only 3 weeks away is 17 miles.

I remembered that the guy who sold the trainer to me said that you could change the resistance on the trainer itself, instead of on your bike. So I got off, grabbed the cable, and started clicking as I rode. That was definitely the main issue. I decreased the resistance to the point where I could shift my bike gears back to the middle big cog and the 3rd or 4th small one. For the rest of the ride, I was comfortably riding at an 11.5 mph pace (still pathetic but I cared about distance more than pace).

Then the issue became how uncomfortable and at times, painful, it was to sit on the bike seat for that long. After 8 long miles of constantly wanting to quit, I started alternating 5 minutes of riding in position with 5 minutes of sitting straight up to give myself a break. I’m not sure if I just need a different seat or if I just need to get used to it. I plan on riding at least 20 minutes every day to see if I can get more used to the seat. If not, I will have to go buy a new one because that is by far the most miserable part about riding the bike.

Regardless of all that, I finished the whole 15 miles in 1:28.

So you can probably see why I’m discouraged about the bike portion. I’m also discouraged about the swimming and running parts. While I am getting better at the swim, I’m still very slow (it takes me about 21:30 to swim 800 yards) and while I “come from a running background” into the sport of triathlon, I’m incredibly slow at that too (running 10:30-11:30 minutes miles on average).

I’ve always said that I do triathlons for fun and the personal challenge, not to win because I know how slow I am. God did not build me for speed. But I’m even slower than I had been! When I was training in 2009, I was biking at a 14 mph pace regularly (on a mountain bike), running 9:00-10:00 minute miles, and was swimming 200 yards in 4:30 instead of 5:00 or 5:15.

I know that a big part of why I was faster then was that I was doing weight training in addition to the cardio endurance sessions. But I’m hesitant to add that in because it made me so tired that I could barely function. I had no energy for anything beside working and sleeping. I stopped grocery shopping, stopped cooking dinner, stopped reading, writing, doing anything except what I needed to do to survive. I felt like my quality of life went down because I didn’t have the energy to do most of the stuff I enjoyed doing. But maybe if I just did 15 minutes a couple times a week…

Despite my discouragement, I’m not going down without a fight. I’m going to focus more on biking and trying to get used to the seat, doing more running intervals to increase my speed, and look into upper body weight workouts that will help me be a faster swimmer.

And come race day, my time will be what it is.

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