Terre Haute

Lewis ‘15
This past weekend we did not live up to the expectations or our even our own expectations. Terre Haute is a hilly course but really it is not that tough. What made us not perform to our best we can’t be sure but most likely it was mental. Such a huge part of running is mental; some would even say that 90% of it has to with what goes on in the mind. All of our bodies were ready for the physical effort that it was going to take to perform. So what happened? Well going out really fast the first mile did not play to any of our advantages but after that we should’ve been able to still run our race if we kept our heads in it. Many of us, like myself though, psyched ourselves out and at times we thought we couldn’t compete. That the first mile took too much out of us to be able to do well over the next 4 miles. This was not true, but we made ourselves believe that. I am reading a book titled Eat and Run by Scott Jurek. In it he tells about how the mind will always tell you to stop before your body needs to. In one chapter he describes a friend of his that he paced to a near victory at a 100 mile race. With roughly 300m to go the two could see the finish and he was a couple miles ahead of the nearest person but something terribly wrong happened. Scott’s friend collapsed and could no longer move. He couldn’t even stand or support his weight. Eventually Scott had to help walk him to the finish but they disqualified him and denied him the victory. He was rushed to the hospital and tests were done but other than exerting lots of energy and over the whole past day basically, nothing was wrong with him. Scott believed that it was his friend’s mind that shut him off. He saw the finish and his mind told him he was done and boom he was. The mind can overpower everything so we must always be in control of our mind and thoughts. No negativity and always staying focused and in the race. No, this is not easy and I myself have problems with this quite often but if the Redpack can accomplish this all at the same time in a race then every other team should watch out. This will be the difference maker in the end of the season and I think the rest of the guys know this as well. Hopefully this first 8k has got the jitters and bad luck out of the guys and we all start kicking more and more ass.