Even the smallest victories

First I apologize for my mini hiatus from my blog.

Training in the winter gets old… and boring. Didn’t want to put you all to sleep or whine too much about cold, dark days.

Even the smallest victories help fuel the mind.

These past weeks were weeks of skilled scheduling, and hard workouts.
I had to double up a few workouts to accommodate other commitments and conflicts.

As I prepare for my first official race of the season this Sunday I am looking back at some of my small victories and hard work since November. Part of my positive mental training is to pull all the things that I’ve done well to help fuel my mental race.

So here are some of my small victories (in no particular order):

• Getting ALL my workouts done as scheduled in a single week
•  Having a clean house and bills done  
  (This and #1 didn't happen every week - but I'm getting much better at it)
• Doing a non-masters swim workout that back in Nov would have seemed hard, is now manageable and even, dare I say, easy?!
• NOT stopping during computrainer class when all the other guys in the class stopped during the toughest parts
•  Running my half marathon course averaging 9 min miles during my TRAINING run
•  Running that same course thinking the hills aren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be. (we’ll see how I feel about that during the race this weekend)
•  I can see my abs! Thanks Kate!
• Did well in both swim meets
• Ran in 8 degrees with a wind chill of -2
• Learned how to drink a Gatorade slushy while running
•  Learned how to warm up my Gu
• Got my 5k pace down to a 7:45 minute mile! (granted this was only for 5 mins- but still!!)
•  Ran with a hangover (found out wine is no good for me!)
• Since mid Dec: 22.5 hours of swimming; 24.5 hours of biking; 19 hours of running; 20 hours of strength training- phew!

So all the small victories will be with me as I step up to the starting line come Sunday. As those voices of negativity try to creep in … I will pull these out! 

I'm ready for my race on Sunday.

Looking forward to racing with my Mom, Brother, coaches and friends- Race report to follow this weekend!

Have a great week!