Remember this old song from elementary school?
With the leg bone connected
to the knee bone,
and the knee bone connected
to the thigh bone,
and the thigh bone connected
to the hip bone.
I had that rhyme in my head during our run today and I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered I had been thinking about it while I was reading a book the other day and mentally connected it to our marathon training and it must have popped back into my head around mile 2 of our 7 miler today.
The main character in the book was a runner and she was talking about running and training.
She said that the races you run are only as good as your training, your training is only as good as the miles you log and the miles you log are only as good as your mental toughness.
Hey Running? From my experience our time spent together is almost entirely a MENTAL activity. I've noticed that for me the hardest mental step is putting on my stuff and getting out the door. I have to have all of my stuff completely ready to go and if anything I need isn't readily accessible, or my GPS watch or my iPod is dead it really mentally throws me off my game. I need to have my certain hat, my certain socks, my certain sunglasses, everything charged up and then I'm ready to go. I am definitely a creature of habit on my runs, but that is an entirely different blog post.
Even though I mostly love you, Running, I have to play a lot of mental games to make it THROUGH our runs and my races. For example - my goal is only ever to make it to our turnaround points in our training runs - or halfway. If I can mentally make it to that 4 or 5 mile turnaround, I consider us "done" because I know we still have to run home and we no longer have the option to give up early.
Another hard mental part of our runs is that STUPID final hill by the golf course we have to run up at the END of our route. It is usually into the wind and VERY steep and feels like it never EVER evens out to flat ground. I usually put on one of my favorite fast paced songs, put my head down and just talk myself the entire way up, telling myself that if I can make it up that hill today, that will officially be the hardest thing I have to do all day. It's not always TRUE, but in that moment, it is. I have days where my goal is to get it over as soon as possible and just book it up that cursed hill, but I have days where my only goal is surviving up the hill without walking.
You've probably noticed, Running, but another mental game I play at the end of my run is to beat my time goal every time, even by 1 second. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't. But it gives me a new goal every day.
This week we are upping mileage again and throwing in some heavier weight training. I'm actually really looking forward to this week, mostly because there isn't a lot of things on my calendar BESIDES running. I love summer.
See you tomorrow, Running. Another training piece to put together in the puzzle that will eventually be the picture of our Marathon!
Becka
XXOO
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