Hay’s in the barn… thoughts while walking with Maggie

While walking The Path this morning with Maggie the golden retriever, I was thinking of crisp and bright fall mornings past, particularly Saturday and Sunday mornings. When I wasn’t attending XC meets or soccer games I was running races and most of my best races were on those fall mornings with weather just like today.

“It’s great to be alive,” says Jim.

When “the hay is in the barn” (thanks again Jim) our Thursday eve workouts are for maintaining sharpness, everyone should be pumped for racing.

Over the years with JSRC, I learned a lot. Stuff that Jim and Ron Piro and Elizabeth already knew slowly dawned on me and with it a nifty sense of confidence and wellbeing.

Trust your coach. Trust your workouts. Trust yourself. There’s no reason for doubt.

Spring is for doubts. We’re sooo slow after slogging through the winter – enduring the dark, the cold, the wet, and the frozen. Will we ever get faster or is it lost forever? We race but there are doubts on the line and at every split. This is STUPID. I feel horrible.

Summer is for growth. All of a sudden we’re complaining about the heat. We’re getting faster… we’re feeling better. But we’re still not SURE. It takes a long time for winter to wear off!

Then it’s Fall. Time for those classic races on crisp mornings with blue sky, bright and low sun, and long shadows. Confidence is building after the initial shock of new found pace. “Be gone doubts!” you say to yourself in mile two of your first fall 5K.

Then a funny thing happens. You say to yourself (some even say it out loud), “I ran the in-and-out mile!” and “I really hung in there on the mile repeats.” Or, “Those 200s across the grass were really good.” And then it dawns on you, “I’m really ready.”

Then, your warm up becomes serious, a time for focusing not a time for socializing. You start moving up closer to the start line with each race. You can predict your finishing time within seconds. There are no more doubts. You know you will do your best and you know that you will be quietly ecstatic in each finish chute. You may be puking but you’ll be ecstatic. You will feel that little smile creeping onto your face because you did your best on the day. And you realize that is what it’s all about, doing your best on the day.

So, as the days get shorter and the sun is lower on the horizon, and you’re racing more and more, remember to trust yourself because there’s no reason for doubt…after all, “the hay is in the barn.”