I once read of Nic Bideau’s training involving Craig “Buster” Mottram and how he is very careful about which races he lets him do it the lead up to a big race. The general gist was that he would only go in races that he would do very well at, ie win, and at the time I thought that that was pretty pointless as he wouldn’t toughen up for the big races by only beating minnows.
How the world has turned. I now see that confidence is a huge factor, especially when it comes to training and self belief, you have to beleive you can do it. I might have only come 50th out of about 65 at the Derby Dash on Sunday but bot did my confidence get a boost. After taking it out slow I powered home over the last half of the race in quite a good time for me. Now I am full of confidence that I can finish a marathon and finish it in a reasonable time for my stage of running development. If you have been following along my journey you may have noted in a few places that I wasn’t overly confident I could stick out training and go the whole way on race day.
Sundays great run, where I didn’t put any pressure on myself (I just wanted to get around at an average of 6min/k), allowing me to go out at an easy pace boosted my confidence through the roof. I seem to recall writing that I felt I could have run one, maybe even two more laps. So much was this boost that as I was running to work this morning I was thinking about, among other things, my second marathon and what I would need to do to go sub 4hrs and qualify for 6ft.
As a result of this new training Psyche philosophy thingy that I have now plagiarised I don’t think I will do the 10k Sri Chimnoy on Sunday as Ewen suggested. (I don’t want to risk not doing a PB and ruining all the good work of Sunday). Instead I will have an easy mid-range run and then concentrate on preparing myself for the 30k river run. I must say my legs are feeling stronger this week than last, like steel springs again, obviously puffed up with this new found running greatness ;P
I can run 42.2km.
6 Comments
June 27, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Good on you Sensible Simon!
June 27, 2007 at 2:04 pm
The power of the mind. Staggering when you think about it. We achieve because we think we can achieve.
June 28, 2007 at 12:09 pm
great post! I would love some of your confidence to rub off on me for Sunday’s run … I think I can I think I can …
June 29, 2007 at 9:41 am
hahaha I told you
6ft here you come!
July 2, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I know you can. 42.2km here you come.
July 5, 2007 at 9:18 am
This is exciting! For a good display of confidence, check out Mottram’s win in Ostrava:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN_ygXH26Mw
See you at Six Foot