Here is a blurb from Heather Wurtele that I found spoke to me.
But I'm getting off track. What I wanted to talk about was focus and winning. In my experience, it comes with focusing on the process and being completely in the moment, rather than worrying about the outcome. If you're thinking "shit, we're down by 1, and we really need to win this game" and are totally fixated on the result, you'll be less focused on the immediate moment in the game and more likely to miss a pass and not help yourself out at all.
But I'm getting off track. What I wanted to talk about was focus and winning. In my experience, it comes with focusing on the process and being completely in the moment, rather than worrying about the outcome. If you're thinking "shit, we're down by 1, and we really need to win this game" and are totally fixated on the result, you'll be less focused on the immediate moment in the game and more likely to miss a pass and not help yourself out at all.
In races I can't control what other people do, or the weather, or the difficulty of the course. I can only control my focus and my effort at each moment in the race.
Which leads me to another important point: Belief. And to believe you need optimism.
A really interesting study was done with elite swimmers at the University of Arizona. Swimmers took a pretty involved questionnaire to determine their "self explanatory style" - basically whether their internal dialogue was positive or negative - and from that they were categorized as optimists or pessimists. They were asked to swim their best event as a time trial, but the coach gave them times that were slower than their actual splits. Then, they were asked to re-do the time trial.
Across the board, the people who were pessimists swam slower, while the optimists rallied and swam even faster, often hitting significant personal best times! It is pretty fascinating that thier performance was so strongly determined by the style of their internal dialogue. Saying "I'm a failure" as if failure is somehow inherent to you is total bullshit and completely counter-productive. Saying "ok, I just failed, but that was just one time. I know I can do better", and giving your all when you try again leads to great things!
Heather Wurtele
General comment- You should tell me a little more about your racing. Also, I understand what your job is, however, it is good camaraderie or even motivating for me to know what my coach is up to. I actually think it is good camaraderie and motivating to know what your other athletes are up to, too. So, I am maybe exposing my feelings a little too much, but at the Grizzly, that just made my day to have a photo taken with you and all those other amazing athletes you coach. I think you should organize some training camps. I think we would all get better having each other and you there working together.
Funny little Bozeman thing: The trail that I run on from MSU has a protective red winged blackbird. It dive bombs all the passerby's pretty aggressively. Makes you sprint and wave your hands around like a crazy person. Makes me laugh for the rest of the day though.
I remember something from last week I wanted to tell you.
Was doing that swim of lots of fast 50's. This guy jumped in the lane next to me. He was doing backstroke really fast. It was all I could do to keep up with him, doing my fast 50's. Then he would do a backstroke flip turn and be 10 feet beyond the flags before I even came out for my first breath. Basically halfway down the pool on me at the turn. Three things I learned that day. That guy is fast. 2- I was not doing those 50's fast. I could do them faster, and because of him I did. 3- I have a lot to learn. In summary it ended up being a really great swim.
Schedule- I don't have anything super busy at work this week. Just trying to wrap up some experiments and compile a bunch of data. So far it looks like what I have been doing for the last 6 months might not have a lot of meaning. We kept seeing trends but nothing strong and if you put it all together there are no differences. Uggh.
Question- I need to volunteer at a Tuesday night bike race. I signed up for July 8th and then the boss sprung a potential post doc on us, so will need to be available for dinner. Can you schedule that in somewhere/sometime that would work.
Plantar Fascia- I am being completely honest here. It is not getting any better.It is better than when I told you about it a few weeks ago, but the healing has plateaued. When I run it is sore for the rest of the day and stiff for the next couple of mornings. It doesn't hurt riding or swimming. I have an appointment with Jason again this week so I will tell him and we will see what to do next. I would like to know more about the timeline for healing etc. I may even have to look up some info. Update- Run on Sunday was good and I did PT 2x afterwards. It doesn't hurt on Monday!!
The week highlights:
Tuesday nighter- The road race was two loops and 36 miles instead of one. Didn't realize this until the start, so was thankful I had planned on the long ride home and brought enough food. Also, excited to race the extra miles and not slog them away by myself. Hung with the front group (except two guys that got away, I wasn't paying attention until they were too far gone) the whole time. Dropped a lot on the first hill and a few more on the second. Still need to execute my finishing ability, but chased down all the attacks. Even chased one guy back on. He was mad at me. My legs got more and more tired each attack but they could still respond. I am super stoked. Have never, ever, been able to race like this before. So, my question to you is what happened? I can't pinpoint a change in training etc. Is it just time? Working at biking for lots of years now? Feeling good Elliot, I am getting really excited about racing at the end of the month.
Friday swim- On Thursday I took off a few hours from work and helped my dad. I rolled on a bunch of waterproofing on the first floor to protect it before we get a roof. It wasn't hard, but my back was so sore on Friday. Also, I had a meeting Friday, stupid stuff with Maureen, and an experiment, so by 5 pm I was tired. Glad Audrey met me to swim and we busted that swim out. Again, it was tricky hard. Remember when we had a conversation on swimming once where you told me I was going to swim so much I would be so tired I would be forced to have better form? I think that happened just a little on Friday. Those final 4 50's were sooo tough. 1- I think the fore/aft of the band swimming jumped in there and 2- I was actually enjoying the flip turns for the rest. Most importantly though was that body position.
Saturday- Impressed the old guys so much on Tuesday that let me ride with them on Saturday ;). I was excited about the ride all week and honestly feeling really good about finding some new training people. I love Lawrence and Art, but I just don't get pushed with them. Another reason I wanted to go with them was because of the route. They were going to the same route I was going to try. It ended up being 92 miles from my house to the end of the road at Clarkson and back. One hard climb and the rest pretty flat or rolling. We had a headwind the whole way out and a tailwind back. We also ran from the rain and did a pretty good job of not getting wet. Only stopped for a couple of minutes at the gas station in Manhattan each way. Felt really good. Pulled a few times pretty hard, made it up the climb feeling good, and felt much less worked than when we did Chico a couple of weeks ago.
Sunday swim- Feeling good in the open water. Pushed those 8 minute intervals pretty hard and felt really good.
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