Low Expectations, High Goals

Today as I was coming out of my class this morning, I caught up with a guy in my class who was going to the rec center. I caught up to him and asked him if he was going to get a little workout in, and he said that he was and then asked me what I was going to do, and I was like "yea I'm probably just going to run for a hour," and he was like "WOW! Are you training for something?" I was like "Yea I've got a nine mile race this weekend," and he told me good luck and all that jazz and asked if there was a time I was going for, and it took me a while to register in my head that my race was less than a week away so I said "uhhh...probably somewhere along 57 mins for 9mins," which that is around 6:20 per mile. We parted ways to get our SWELL on and I kept thinking 57? 57?! Is that all I'm going to shoot for? So with all the math going on in my head trying to calculate what kind of pace I should and could run. ANYWHO I set off on my run feeling pretty awesome (started off 6:31 pace) then after a few miles in the books I went down to around 6:27 pace then on down to 6:22 pace. I ended up running the 9 miles in around 57:30, and then I began to think to myself that if I can do this all by myself imagine what I can do when I'm racing other guys and adrenaline pumping through my veins!

I feel like every time I try to do something such as run a 9 mile race, asking a lady friend out on a date, or doing something that could possibly knock my self-confidence down a notch I usually expect for the worst, but I have found out that over time I am more capable of doing things if I set my mind to it. I'll stick with the running example, when I thought about running 57mins for 9 miles I then remembered that 55mins won the race last year, and I've gotta be kidding myself if I think I am going to let myself come in second place aka First Loser. Even if I do come in 2nd or 3rd or even last I don't run for the "fame" or "glory" because I do what makes me feel good and running a bad race will never make me hate what I love. What I am trying to get across is that I know that sometimes in order to have something you love, you have to go through the struggles and the pain of your journey to be able to cherish and understand what you have accomplished.