Mental Battles

As I’ve been lurking on other people’s blogs, I’ve been trying to adopt one main philosophy that I keep reading about. Live in the moment. When you’re swimming don’t think about biking. When you’re biking, don’t think about running. Just live in the moment, enjoy each stroke, pedal and step.


I’ve been trying to adopt this philosophy in my training so that when race day comes (only 346 days away) I’ll be doing this without even trying. That’s one of my goals for my Ironman. To make sure I’m enjoying every single second of it and more importantly to focus on one thing at a time.

Normally, I like being busy. I like working on different projects at once. My job requires me to be busy constantly and I always have to think ahead so this is a hard concept for me to follow. I had a bike speed workout on Wednesday and I was able to block everything out and concentrate on my cadence, how strong I was feeling and overall just enjoy myself. I had a great workout! I beat my 24 mile Central Park time by a minute (which doesn’t seem like a lot but it felt great) and I felt like I got a lot out of this workout that will make me stronger over time.

Then, last night came the track workout. I was pretty beat so I slept in and decided to run after work. The only catch is that the East River track is 2.5 miles away from work so already I know I’m doing 5 miles plus track intervals. That kind of intimidated me but I pushed it out of my head. My first few intervals were pretty decent. I was keeping my goal pace of 8 min/miles and I was definitely working but I didn’t feel like I was gonna die like normal. Then came my 2nd to last interval. It was an 800, so 2 laps around the track. I knew my very last interval was a 400 (1 lap) so while I was running the 800 I started thinking about the 400 and how hard I could push it. I’m having this whole conversation in my head about pushing it faster than 8 min miles and I wonder how fast I could go, especially at the end of the workout... blah blah blah. The next thing I know it’s the end of my 800 and I ran 8:03 - my slowest interval of the night!! argh. I know, I know, it’s only 3 seconds but this proves my point of focusing on the moment at hand and not thinking about what’s ahead. Let’s hope I remember this lesson and keep moving forward in my focusing journey!


The other mental battle I’m having has to do with running as well. (See a theme here?) I’m racing the Bronx Half Marathon on Sunday (yes, I said racing and not running). This half marathon time will be a guideline of what my goal Chicago Marathon could be. My overall goal for Chicago is to run under 4 hours but I’d love to get closer to 350/355 rather than sneak under 4. In order for that to happen I’ll need to run a 1:50-1:52 half marathon pace (8:28 min/miles). The formula is to take your half marathon time, double it and add 10 minutes. So I seem to have a mental block of 9 minute miles. I believe in my head that I could never hold a faster pace for longer distance than 9 min miles. But, here’s the thing, I think my body can do a faster pace. I just need to head to catch up with my legs. It’s so much easier said than done though. So we’ll see how Sunday goes... I’m gonna do my best to “race” and to race smart!