Sometimes one needs to see and feel their success before they can acheive success. To often athletes biggest obstacles are themselves, more specifically their minds. "Self Fulfilled Prophecies" , one can often manipulate things in order to cut themselves some slack on the attempt of their upcoming goals. 

Lets begin with the physical stuff,  the tough workouts. One workout is the race pace workout, it may not be the highest intensity, especilly if its for a marathon but it is a pretty good tell tale on where you are at and what you have inside of you. But this may be missed for many reasons, want to run with friends, to cold, to hot etc, etc, deep down one can be avoiding the confirmation of inconsistant training, or hoping for some reason even though it was never practiced, race pace will just happen on race day, not likely.

Mentally, this is a toughy as most recreational athletes have many things to juggle on top of their racing goals. Again, this is to make one aware not to critisize as I work through the same things myself. But as a coach you begin to have the luxury of learning from so many athletes, and although we are so different I find in the home stretch we tend to show a lot of similar ways of dealing with our fear of not making our goal. We may have tried our best to keep our training near the top of our priorities for 22 weeks,  but in the last 2 weeks of our 24 week plan, all of a sudden we tell ourselves theres a lot of stuff going on maybe its not the right time. I had said to someone a few weeks ago, during your 4-6 hours of running per week you think about that and only that. That still leaves you 162 hours to look after life and get 56 hours of sleep.

That 6 hours per week of focus will still provide you what you need to accompish your goal, just like it was enough in week 6, 14 and 19. 

These thoughts were inspired by some athletes who overcame some related mental and physical roadblocks to go onto achieving a major goal. Their completed training gave them all the confidence needed to set out on their race feeling ready,  and finish their race in a very gutsy manner, dropping 30 seconds per km from their pace because they believed they could. Mentally, i cant say all that happended in their heads but i told them to tend to family and everythning else as they need to but after that give themselves the time to relax and focus on the race. I was reminded of the power of all this when one of them said she saw her exact finishing time before she left on her trip and consistant completion of her workouts provided her everything she needed to feel like this time, a sub 4 was 100% possible. And it was by 5 minutes.

  One of the Athletes who reminded me of everything it takes to accomplish your goals.

I am 45!

I am a Mom!

I am a 4 time Ironman!

And now, I am a Boston Qualifier!!!

 My journey to becoming a Boston Qualifier.

I have wanted to qualify for Boston for the last 10 years.  Today, I am a Boston Qualifier.  Why haven’t I got here till now?  Many things have gotten in the way but mostly, it was my Mental Belief.  I finally let go of my fears. 

In early September, I asked my coach, can I do this?  Not just run another Marathon, but run a Boston Qualifier time.  I asked Kevin, his response was, “Can you commit to the runs?”  I said YES!  Many times during our few months I had to train, Kevin and I had discussions about the possibilities of making the time.  A few times I heard him say, “You can do it. You are strong enough.”  I heard the words and a little spark in me ignited and I would keep on following the schedule.  My training buddy, Mia and I had runs that matched what our schedule had asked and we would say, YES!  We did it!  Then we would have the odd run that did not go in our favor and that big dark cloud would come in and tell me I could not do it.  Luckily, I would whimper to my coach, and I would cringe at what his response might say, however, he never failed me.  He still had amazing words that would get me back to YES, I CAN. 

I also talked to many friends  and the support was amazing.  The words I heard to remember during the hard times during the workout or race were, “This is Fun” or, just for this one race, stay focused” the scenery is nice, but “don’t get distracted, stay focused.”

I wrote this letter on November 23.  Today is, Dec 6th.  I let go of the fear and started to believe in my dreams.

I Believed in me.

Thank you. Thank you. To all that helped along the way.