Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Falling Apart

As with any sport, the more you train, usually the better you get. I play golf about once a year. I am especially skilled at losing my ball in the (insert anything other than fairway here) and 10+ putting. I swear they add little hills to the greens that are not visible to the human eye.

Typically around the ninth hole I become somewhat bored with the game. Seriously - who does the same thing for four-plus hours??!! (Bike riding obviously doesn't fall into this category for me...) Once I become bored, I tend to fall apart. Spectacularly. At this point my game either becomes very entertaining, or occasionally for me - on the rare case I am taking golf seriously - frustrating.

My very first ironman swim. If you look closely you will see me next to the whitecap on the left and the man with the very awkward swim stroke.

At some point during a swim (race or training) I tend to have a section where I fall apart. My stroke just goes out the window, I am certain all the girls have completely left me in their dust, and I am positive I'm swimming backwards. I have gotten better at reminding myself when this happens that what is going through my head is not true. I also remind myself the countless hours I have spent training - and that I did NOT put all this training time in only to fall apart in a race. What do you think about or tell yourself when you start to fall apart in order to bring you mind back into the game?