It has been occuring to me of late that one of the reasons I have been struggling to get back into training over these last few weeks is not because of physical limitations, but rather mental ones. The mental limitations have been in the form of a lack of confidence. I have come to realise that the break I had while I was sick at the beginning of January has shaken the belief I have in my body.
The loss of confidence has been a subtle thing, subtle enough that I only realised over the weekend. During the training on the weekend it dawned on me that my body wasn't really as fragile as I had convinced myself that it was. Sure I am less fit than I was, but the base fitness is still quite strong. I have probably been tiptoeing around my own body more than I have had to in the last couple of weeks.
Since this epiphany on the weekend I have been making a point of pushing myself a bit more in training. Still being sensible of course and not pushing too hard too quickly, but at the same time I am not letting my mind make excuses for my body. Excuses that it doesn't need.
A good example of this was my run tonight. The point of the run was to push a bit harder for around 30 minutes. The intensity wasn't crazy, but it was also a bit quicker than I have run for a while. It was the sort of session that over the last couple of weeks I probably would have let myself take the easy option. Telling myself I wasn't quite up for that kind of intensity yet. Not tonight though. Tonight I just gave it a go, I knew I would probably be able to hold the target pace, it might hurt, but I was capable of doing it. I wasn't going to break. Having made the decision to try I started the session with the intention of success.
Of course, as is often the case, starting the session with the belief that I could complete it led me to do just that. That is the thing with confidence in training and racing, believing you can do something is usually the critical first step to actually doing it.
Forcing myself to have some self belief is also helping me to feel more comfortable with training in general. As training feels better, I get fitter, so training continues to get better. I believe more and the training improves again. It is the self fulfilling upward spiral that I wrote about the other day. I have been playing about with training for the last couple of weeks, waiting for it to feel good again. Really I needed to take a bit more responsibility for how the training was feeling, work on getting my head in the right space so that the rest could follow. Not just wait around for it to happen for me. Hopefully this week I have taken those first steps in getting my head back in the game.
Having the body catch up will take a while, but I can have confidence that it will do so.
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