How big is too big of a swing?

Where is the line between shooting your shot and optimistically delulu?

The past few days Rachel Entrekin has become the talk of the trail and ultra running world for her record smashing performance at the Cocodona 250. Her mantra “why not me?” got me thinking.

Where is the line?

In the past few years, I’ve re-evaluated my mental approach to running, mostly, I’m actually trying. It sounds silly, but I felt like my strategy was always to “pace myself” or “save my legs” which left so much performance on the table because the fade and the pity party was always the same. I just started slower and finished slower so my overall time was slower.

I’ve had results I could never have dreamed of.

In the past I would have thought some of my more recent results could only have come from that perfect “unicorn” day, when nothing went wrong and everything was perfect.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong, results come when you put yourself in it a bit and try.

You have to try on race day.

Push a bit more when you want to stop and walk, eat a lolly when you want to sit on a rock and cry, keep moving forward when you want to quit the sport and take up crochet full time.

Just try.

You have to try in training.

Do that speed session after spending the day in heels, drive to the local stairs when you aren’t sure the specificity is even doing anything, eat the salad when you really want the burrito (nah scratch that, get the burrito!).

Just try.

I’m not embarrassed to care about it. I know I’m not racing for sheep stations. I’m not even racing against other people. I know it’s not that important in the scheme of things, it’s not curing cancer or solving world hunger. But it’s important to me and so I’ll try.

I have some goals.

I wrote them down.

I feel like if I was carrying Sanka’s lucky egg it would have broken over a lifetime ago, so making it to the end in one piece is still a massive achievement for me and not to be sniffed at.

I will be happy if I achieve any of these goals.

I have made it through the taper (mostly, I didn’t cut my hair, but I did get a regretful piercing that I removed less than 4 hours after getting it!), I made it through the training, now we just have to make it through race day.

See you on the flip side