Thursday, April 29, 2010

Is Competition Healthy?

As I have stated before, I am competitive. I was raised that way.  It is part of my personality. It's my Dad in me. 

On Saturday I am running a 5K with 2 of my friends.  At first we started out saying that we were just going to do this for fun.  That lasted about 5 minutes in my head.  If I'm going to run a 5K, I'm going to run a 5K, not jog, not walk, not talk. 

So what started out as a healthy fun thing to do has turned into a major competition in my head.  My friends are planning on doing the fun talk and walk and run thing.  I'm planning on running.  I have set a goal in my head and I'm not sure if I can do it or not.  I had a great run last week and thought that my goal was completely reasonable.  This week I've had a really bad run and an average run.  Neither gives me the confidence to say that I will meet my goals.

So here I sit on Thursday contemplating and picturing my race in my head.  I have another whole day to think about it, picture it, run it in my head.  Right now I go from doing well in my head to doing horrible.  Why does it really matter?  Why am I putting myself through this? What I really need to do is let it go and try to just do my best on Saturday. 

Any advice?

1 comment:

  1. My advice: Be realistic--although you might not know what that looks like until Saturday. I planned to run a lot last weekend, but it was hard to find a groove with 34,999 other people running the same route. When all was said and done, I still felt a great sense of accomplishment, even though I wasn't the track star I'd hoped I would be. And--as a bonus--every picture shows me running and smiling!

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