I have been quiet. Not only on social media and blog writing but with my friends. I am an open book most days, but recently I have kept to myself. I needed to change my focus and reprioritize where I was putting my energy.
With that, most people were shocked or had no idea I signed up for a local race today. In fact, I have only shared my entire race schedule with 1 person. On my longer runs, when asked what races I am doing, I slyly respond with my schedule is open. It is not. Racing was not fun for me. Why? Pressure and Fear. I have been hesitant to share because of this.
As many people know, I grew up playing court sports. It was very competitive. I don’t recall how many basketball championships my high school won but there was an expectation that you would make it to state every year. Not going was never an option, figure it out to keep the streak alive was the mentality. The pressure began when we were grade schoolers. We were regularly asked (told) if we were going to the game on Friday/Saturday to watch the older girls and see how they executed plays. Volleyball was different. For several years, we were a basketball school and quite frankly, other schools across the state were flat better than us. However, there was still the expectation of making it to playoffs. How do you get to playoffs? You be better than everyone else (let the comparing begin). Perform better than your opponent. It was fun in high school but I was carrying this with me after and into other areas of my life (academics). I created unnecessary expectations on myself and every time I began to race, I went into fear mode. Fear of failing. Fear of not being my best. Fear of f*cking up. Fear of disappointing someone. Fear of being “shamed” for not following a plan. For the record, Elliot has NEVER been this person. However, from previous experiences, I may do everything right but the one minor error I made during a game, my coach never let me forget, even though our team came away with a massive win. I understand from a coaches perspective this approach because they want to fine tune the weaker areas and get everything possible from athletes. At the same time, when you are smart, you know the mistakes you made and it is already on your radar to improve. Rant over 🙂
All of this to say, I hadn’t felt like racing because I was suffocating myself in pressure and fear. I signed up for today’s race a few months ago. Around the same time I started training again. October was a shit show of a month as far as training went. Work picked up. I have been sick for at the past month and am still battling with congestion, lung/chest pain and sinus issues. I haven’t been consistent with my training. I was home for my sister’s wedding for a week and family was my priority, not running. Perfect equation for success if you ask me! I was nervous last night. In a good way. I did not feel prepared at all for this race and Elliot kindly reminded me I shouldn’t be. This is a race to see where my fitness is at and use it as a benchmark for my A races.
I gave myself a goal pace of 8:00 min/mi. – a pace I was capable of running in training runs. I also saw a estimated pace of 7:45-8:00 in my training blog. When I arrived at the start line, my 8:00 quickly went to 7:30 because I had to beat the estimated pace range! 5Ks are a different beast. I have only run a handful of 5Ks and I haven’t learned how to pace this distance and be comfortable feeling pain early in a race. 7:30 sounded good though. The miles ticked by, I looked at my watch once, and it was over (my final time is irrelevant but I definitely shocked myself :)).
Hot damn, it was so much fun being back out there. Breaking the habit of unnecessary pressure and fear is a challenge for me. Although it was a long time ago, but these emotions were instilled in me and beat into my head every.friggin.day since elementary school. You can’t just undo it. It takes practice to reframe your thoughts and perspective. My final message to EK today:
It was fun to be out there today. I am slowly realizing it is so much more fun without putting unnecessary pressures on myself. No one gives a f*ck what you do, the stop caring mentality is finally kicking in.
I have a lot of work to do to get to where I know my fitness can be, but LFG!
Cheers!