In less than 48 hours, I will be in Portsmouth, participating in the Great South Run.  Although I’ve only trained for 12 weeks, it seems like forever.  It’s been challenging physically and challenging mentally.  People who’ve done something similar before all tell me that it’s a wonderful experience and that I will enjoy it.   Obviously I’ll be reporting back after the event.

 

One of the most enlightening experiences was a couple of Saturdays ago when I was running with my coach (she was on a bike due to a bad chest cough) along Bournemouth Pier for an hour.  On the second half of the run, I decided to increase my speed and was able to maintain it for the rest of the journey.  What was interesting was that for the first time, I found myself “in the zone”.  This means that my focus was purely on the act of running, of taking each step, rather than judging the running as difficult, uncomfortable, boring or any number of other interpretations which the mind likes to make up.  At the end of the run, I felt like a “real runner” whatever that means.  I felt positively powerful.  It is an enormous clue to say that when we get our mind into its rightful place – i.e. as a tool for us to use rather than us being its slave, then we can achieve whatever we want.

 

My challenge on Sunday, therefore, is to get back into that zone and be master of my mind at least for the duration of the run. 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Great South Run, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.