A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

(or, as I said to the Hubster this spring as I attempted to button an increasingly-tight pair of pants, "a waist is a terrible thing to mind.")

Skating is a physical sport, of course, but mental conditioning is just as important as physical. You need to be able, especially in a long race like a 5k, to keep focused on pushing yourself to your limit, and not let your brain talk your body out of doing what it is able to do.  I've always had issues with this, and Coach TieGuy has spent a considerable amount of time over the past few years explaining to me (over and over) that a lot of my limitations when skating are mental.  After many explanations--which I believed but didn't seem to be able to internalize--he finally tried a more graphic approach.  Once, when I finished (I thought) an endurance workout and was at the end (I thought) of my physical abilities, he cheerfully told me (through the walkie talkie) "OK, one more now!"  And, of course, I was able to do one more lap.  Then there was the whole "TieGuy channels Yoda's 'Try/Not Try' speech but uses proper grammer and syntax" episode.  I don't remember what went wrong with what workout, but something did and TieGuy wanted to demonstrate to me that my mental limits, not my physical, were stopping me.  So, after I finished the workout at less-than prescribed pace, he said "now, you're going to go out and do a 40 second lap."

"But I..."

"No, you're going to do a 40."

"I'm not sure I..."

"You're going to do a 40."

"OK, I'll try..."

"No.  You won't 'try,' you'll do a 40."

"OK, FINE!  I'll do a 40."

But I didn't.  I did a 39.

After that, TieGuy mostly just made his point by giving me a meaningful look and tapping his head.

But anyway, minds...they need workouts just as much as bodies do, and, just as my body is currently (thanks to the thyroid) not where it should be, my mind is not really in skating shape either. This was proven to me yet again in yesterday's workout...

Yesterday's workout was supposed to be 5x6k at 80% effort; yes, 75 laps of fun.  By the time I looked at the workout on Sunday night--and immediately gasped in horror--it was too late to call Coach TieGuy and beg for mercy calmly and rationally explain that perhaps 75 laps might not be in my best interest at this time, and what would be a reasonable substitute? (Evidence #1 of Unfit Brain Syndrome (UBS)--in the past, I would have known darn well what was planned for this workout, and would have been looking forward to it for days,  in that sick, obsessed-athlete "it will be fun to see if I can do this" sort of way).  Anyway, since I couldn't whine to TieGuy, I decided that I could probably figure out an acceptable modification on my own.  A quick canter through my 2-inch-binders revealed that, while I had been assigned this exact workout a couple of times in the previous two years, I had never actually completed it as written--one time TieGuy stopped me after 4 sets, and the other time he told me that he'd drop the fifth set if I'd do the third and fourth without a break, 12k  straight (I'm still not sure that was a bargain.).  Taking into consideration my relatively weak back (for some reason, when I'm hypo my back gets sore really fast when I'm skating, like at 3-4 laps instead of my usual 10 laps or so, which means I've been "standing up" a lot when skating these past 3 months), I didn't think 6k at a time--15 laps--was going to work, but I figured I'd give some 5k's a try...maybe 2 or3, see how I felt...(Evidence #2 of UBS--in the past, although I might get to a point mid-workout where I was secretly--or not-so-secretly--hoping that TieGuy might shorten my workout, I would never have been shortening it in my head before ever setting skate on the track).

So, after a "the Oval maintenance guy squeegeed the two big puddles that were in the infield right across the track" rain delay, my friend Mel and I set off on the first 5k.  As always, in the interest of accurate (i.e., without a draft) data collection, I had the much-faster Mel skate outside of me.  My goal was 47-48 second laps, and the first set was exactly that--lap times varied from  46.4 to 49.1 seconds, which I thought was pretty good, especially since I had decided to look at the lap times only after I was done with a set, not after each lap--mostly because I was afraid they'd be slow and I'd be depressed.  Trying to finish a 12 lap set when depressed is not a good thing.   Set two started out well, with mostly 47's and 48's, and one 46.  Then I hit lap 9, and I could tell that I was slowing pretty drastically.  I hit my watch for the split at the timing line, and as I broke my "no peeking" rule and glanced in dismay at the "50.5" on the display, Mel (who's a big proponent of "quit before fatigue makes your technique issues worse") yelled "I think you should stop now."

Well, that wasn't gonna happen.  Because I don't have any stats for 9-lap sets.  And I have too much of what I like to refer to as "Obsessive Compliance Disorder" to feel comfortable comparing average lap times in a 9-lap set to average lap times in a 10-lap set. I know, I know.  But still, I was going to finish at least 10 laps so I could honorably compare my times to previous 10-lap sets.  So I yelled (gasped, actually) back, "I'm going to do one more."

So I did, but I decided that if I could bring it back down under 50, I'd keep going.  And I did--lap 10 was a 49.5.  So I continued on to lap 11, which was a 48.6.  And then lap 12, which was a 47.7.  Evidence #3 of UBS...big negative splits at the end of an endurance set.

So then, after Mel had to leave, I did another set.  And that one ended on a 46.  At that point I had done what I had planned to do--3 sets--but thinking about it, I knew I shouldn't end there.  The 46 was proof that I had plenty left, physically, to do another set at the correct pace, and it would be a good mental workout to make myself do one more.  So I did.  And, in the third and fourth sets, I looked at my stopwatch for every split.  This gave me something to aim for...hey, that lap was a 47.  I want the next one to be a 47, too...  And it worked, for the most part.

In the first 3 sets, despite the fact that the laps averaged approximately the right pace, there always came a time somewhere between lap 7 and 9 where I'd slow considerably, and then speed up again after that.  I know (since I was in my brain at the time) that this was purely mental, a function of thinking (despite my best efforts not to), "hey, you've still got 5 laps left.  I don't think you can keep this up for 5 laps."  Once the "laps remaining" got down to a manageable 3 or so, though, I'd get back on the pace.  Definitely a mental rather than physical limit, and by the fourth set, I managed to avoid the "mental lapse slow lap."

It's quite obvious to me, though, that I'll need to work just as hard on my mental conditioning as my physical if I plan to be ready to race in three months.