All The Real Tatas Were Elsewhere

I told you the other day that I was getting ready to do a 5K.  It was this past Saturday and I ran it with my friends Heather and Leah.  As I mentioned before, I'm competitive (not with the masses, but more with myself).

The race we ran in was to raise money for Friends for an Earlier Breast Cancer Test.  The real race for breast cancer, The Race for the Cure,  was run in the neighboring town so most of the real women racers were there.  That kind of helped me because our race was not as full of the really competitive strong women.

I am not sure why I was so nervous, but I was.  I didn't sleep more than 4 hours the night before.  I was just really freaking myself out.  Originally I wanted to run the race in less than 29 minutes.  I psyched myself out so much that by the time race day came, I was going to be happy if I came in at around 30 minutes.  It didnt' help that I worked digging in my yard for 2.5 hours the day before, but that's hindsight.

So the race went off and I did ok. I didn't push myself like I probably should have but I thought I was doing ok.  Then I came over the finish line at 32:10.  WHAT?  Are you kidding.  Was I walking?  I didn't think so.

Afterwards I was speaking with an event staff and I was told that even the faster runners were not happy with their times and that they thought the course was too long.  I felt a little better.  Better enough to enjoy the rest of the race day with my friends.  We even found this really great sign across the street.

The girls and I went to breakfast at IHOP afterwards and I threw health to the wind and ordered Chocolate Chip Pancakes.  And they were good. 

And me being me, I went back later and clocked the race.  It was 3.3 miles instead of 3.1 miles (or 5.3K instead of 5K).  And if you work my time out, that means my time would have been 30:13.  Still not great but a whole lot more respectable. 

Overall, it was a success and memories were made.  And they raised $9000 for the cause.  And that's the important part.

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?