Doesn't take much

Self belief can be a bit of a funny thing. It doesn't take much to cause a change.

As I mentioned yesterday I had swimming this morning down with Swim Smooth. I have to say in the past few months I have never been closer to switching off the alarm and staying in bed. 'I don't really need to do this session' I told myself, I don't need to find the motivation, I am in recovery and so I am allowed to be taking it easy. All that is true and so I very nearly did.

I headed down though. As challenging as it can be, I do actually enjoy this swim session. it is hard work, but in a good way.

The hard thing is though that if you get a good result the coach suddenly expects things of you. Funnily enough, you get a good result and suddenly you expect things of yourself too.

I would have to say that now, a week and a half after Ironman, arguably with a bit of fatigue still in the body, I think I did the best Red Mist swim session I ever have. Not necessarily the quickest, but certainly the most quality.

Getting down the pool in a state of questionable motivation I wasn't thrilled when Paul handed me the tempo timer, meaning I was leading one of the groups in our lane. I was after a mentally cruisy session and leading the lane wasn't fitting into that plan. Particularly when the program read 4 x 500m (and that only got us half way through). The thing is though that Paul has a way of putting you in the lead of a lane such that you know that you can't say no. So I didn't.

What was stranger was that when he gave me the tempo timer I didn't really want to say no either. Instead I believed I could do it.

I have written before how tough it can be leading an entire Red Mist session. Even if you pace it right it is just a lot of swimming to get through. Thinking about it, I haven't seen somebody do it successfully in more than a year.

I didn't do it today either.

But I got damn close. 3900m out of the 5200m session.

Before Ironman WA I wouldn't have even tried to do that. I would have given up or passed in on the chance well before I got to that point.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't excel. I faded out a couple of times and ended up missing the pace more than once. I wasn't able to lead the last of the 500m efforts, I just hit the wall too hard and slowed down too much. But I had enough self belief to come back and lead for another 2400m after I had recovered. And that was the key difference, that self belief. Rather than being afraid to try, my brain just shrugged and said sure, I will give it a go. That is a big difference from how I was feeling even a few weeks ago. The only thing that has changed is that there was a rather personally important race in between. If anything I am actually less fit than I was a few weeks ago, the changes are purely mental.

Like anything, self belief is best had in moderation. Too much and it can cause you to do silly things like race too hard and/or over extend in training. But taken in the right amounts it can also be a massive boost, helping you strive for more and push yourself a little further.

Yep, it doesn't take much, but it can make big changes.