Watching and Waiting

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions.  Then, when there's a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we found out how committed we really are and whether we're going to see things through to the finish or quit. -- Joyce Meyer

I feel like I'm in limbo right now, between watching and waiting.  This weekend we went with the local tri club to watch Kona - interesting, but not even very inspiring this year...in part because I had to spend the whole evening explaining why IronSherpa was going to IMMD and I was not.  Honestly, people - I won't pretend I understand your back story because I know you don't know mine.  Yeah, I say I'm not going to IMMD-2 because of the girls but also, the couple of weeks before the IMMD-that-wasn't were very very hard for me.  Lots of stress/anxiety/depression/etc., because I was not feeling good about my training, not feeling confident in anything to be honest.  And I know another DNF would be worse for me than a DNS.  At this point, although subject to change, I don't even think I can go watch IronSherpa finish, because I can only imagine how hard it would be to stand at the finish line I was meant to be crossing.  Kona itself didn't really bother me, but all of my friends -- friends who were so understanding about how devastating the race postponement was -- bothered me, because I realized they don't understand me at all.  And a lot of that is my fault, because I keep my feelings to myself.

Well.  This past year has been hard.  There have been a lot of negatives -- the stress fracture DNF at IM Louisville, the long slow buildup that ended with a hypothermia DNF at the DC R&R marathon, the couple of weeks of the absolute mystery illness followed the hypothermia, another long slow buildup, and then a summer of workouts that just didn't always feel right.  Oh, and dropping a kitchen drawer on my foot and not being able to run.  Again.  In August.  The year appears to be a catalog of small disasters.  And all of them added up to one big mental disaster when it came to my "game face."  I thought I'd completely lost any mental toughness that I used to have.  (I don't even know if I have the mental toughness to be at IMMD to watch IronSherpa...which is why that's still up in the air...)

And then I "watched" as a number of my friends rocked IM Louisville on Sunday.  That inspired me.  I actually felt like I might be getting my groove back.  I wanted to be them.  And I know that I will be someday.  What will that someday be?  I don't know, because I have to wait until we hear whether I can do any of Ironman's discounted races next year.  Sometime next fall, I too will be an Ironman...but what date and what race is still up in the air.  The bummer is that it is hard to start to get a mental picture until I have an exact picture to visualize.  I'm kind of being a baby about it, because I should know in the next couple weeks but I know that once I do know, putting and keeping that picture in my head will be so much easier and make it more likely that I will be able to get my mojo back.

In the meantime (and even after), I've decided to put my focus on quick progress to feed my emotions.  I need to "suffer" some wins - some good workouts, some happy moments where I feel success...and so I'm starting over.  I ran 2 miles yesterday.  And it felt like a win.  (Well, kinda, because I'm still getting over a really vicious head cold that knocked me on my ass last week...but it was a win in my book.)  I want to gather up these wins, hold onto the happy, and start finding my mental toughness again with a platform of wins behind me.  Because I will be an Ironman sometime next fall...just wait & watch me!