Is It All in My Head?

After my fairly positive post on Sunday, I've suddenly become overrun with these nagging feelings of doubt.  Doubt in my training and in my ability.  I think it's because my last few training runs have sucked.  Normally I am able to brush these off and move on but I'm struggling with that right now.   Probably because I have race number two coming up this weekend.  I'm running Around the Bay 30km on Sunday.  Last year was the first time I had run it in a while and I blew my previous time out of the water and amazingly, I still had a fair bit left in the tank to crank it up in the last 3km.   This year, I want to better my time by 4 minutes so I can complete the trifecta and get myself a gold medal.   Medal colours are awarded based on finishing times.  For women, 2:15:00 or faster gets you a gold medal.   Sub 2:30 gets you a silver medal and that's what I managed to snag last year.  Bronze is awarded to anything after 2:30:00.  I did the calculations and I will have to run 4:27/km's if I want to snag that gold medal.  I did a tempo run last night at a 4:26/km average pace and it absolutely killed me.  It was a total struggle.  I can't imagine 30km at that pace.  I'm sure my weight workout yesterday morning had something to do with it but when I got home, I was feeling pretty bummed. 

Made my pace but it was seriously ugly. 

Thankfully my voice of reason was just a phone call away.  G managed to kind of talk me off the ledge.  I still have some lingering doubts (mostly to do with my knees) but realistically it is what it is.  All I can do is go out and do my best on Sunday.  If I get my gold medal, amazing.  If not, that's life.  There's always next year.  That being said, I'm going to take it easy the rest of this week.  And by easy, all I really mean is that I'm going to skip my Thursday run and I'm not going to do any legwork at the gym.  Yup, I'm living on the edge baby.  I had some A.R.T work done on my legs today and no surprise, there were a ton of knots in my upper quads.  It was pretty painful but I'm sure by tomorrow I'll feel better.  Who knows, maybe this is just my head playing it's silly games with me.  After all, my horoscope today forecasts nothing but amazingness over the next little while. 

"The sun may be leaving your sign but that does not mean the good times are ending.  On the contrary, you will soon be enjoying the rewards of the efforts you made in recent weeks.  Well deserved they are too."

If it's THIS good it HAS to be true right??? 

In other exciting news, I have officially committed to doing 6 triathlons in my favourite race series this summer.   I'm doing 5 sprint distance (750m swim, 30km bike, 5 or 7.5km run) and one Olympic distance (1500m swim, 40km bike, 10km run).  It's been ages since I've actually done an Olympic distance race so this should be interesting.   The ultimate goal at the end of the summer is to do Muskoka 70.3 (2km swim, 94km bike, 21.1km run).  BUT that will be dependent on my training partner.  She has not committed yet and until she does, I'm not putting my money where my mouth is.  Either way it's going to be a busy summer.  Thank goodness G likes to race just as much as I do!

Have you planned out your summer races yet?