mindfirerunner

I headed to San Diego for the Rock ‘n’ Roll 1/2 Marathon this weekend. The weather was perfect with overcast skies and temps in the 60s. I had a great plan outlined by my coach, and felt I was ready to hit the course with one goal: stick to the plan.

My head has always been my biggest obstacle. I’ve never cared about where I place on race day, but that I beat my last time (this would be known as Mistake #1). That same self-competitive nature transcends into my training runs, which can lead to exhaustion and the loss of good, simple, basic runs. The night before race day I found myself up every half hour, easily. Before I went to bed I tried everything I could think of to clear my mind, but my thoughts took over and the alarm was a welcome sound at 3:30AM. I started thinking about how tired I was, what could go wrong during the race, and what if my muscles cramped at the start like they had in Nashville? Then, I thought about the plan my coach had given me. At that point, I decided nothing else mattered but my race plan and I focused all of my efforts on thinking solely on my pace per mile.

I started the race and quickly found my pace and stuck to it. I noticed a group of athletes running together and talking about pace, goals, etc. Come to find out, they were running the same pace I needed to run through mile 6, and the San Diego Track Team invited me to tag along. Great company and a nice easy pace to start made the first several miles fly by. In talking with one of the athletes, I found out he went to college in Denver and he joked that this race shouldn’t count because I was at sea level. This race counted – not because I PR’d, and not because it was at sea level, but because I followed my coach’s advice and executed the race I was supposed to.

As we parted ways at mile 6 I wished him well and invited him back to Denver for a little run at altitude. You know, because sea level doesn’t count.