The runners that read this blog I’m sure can understand those days where you just look at the condition and “face palm”. Or you look at the forecast (extended of course) and realize that the morning of your race includes a lightning symbol along with a significant number for the percentage chance of a form of water falling from the sky. Any runner knows that at that moment you begin to dread and plan for a race that won’t involve any kind of personal best. My mental barrier that always gets to me is the wind and fortunately for me, I live in Texas so I can enjoy all the wind I want. And the week will always be comfortable with a light breeze or just bright blue skies but once Friday night rolls around a cold front comes through and Saturday morning is welcomed with 40 mph straight line gusts and naturally it hasn’t rained in God knows when so every grain of dust is finding your throat. (Lubbock regional of course)
         One of the hardest things to do is wake up on race morning and just know that no matter the extent of the conditions when you race, you’re going to accomplish everything you want to that day. A lot of people, in any kind of sport, will be considered a loss before they even show up because they have already allowed their mind to shut off due to the inclement weather. It even spreads to having a sore limb, maybe coming off of sickness, or didn’t get in the usual morning routine. No matter the obstacle, probably more than half the time the athlete doesn’t get over it. It’s weird how fragile we are even after all of the hard work that goes into getting ready for the event. One wrong thing between the time you wake up, to when you step on the line can cost you the race all because the mind has complete control.
         An example that immediately pops into mind is the winter of 2005 when the youth team I was a part of (lake cities xc club) took a trip up to Providence, RI for the USATF Junior Olympic race. The year before had been in Chicago which happened to be the coldest conditions I think any of us had ever been in so felt prepared for anything the North East could throw at us. However, the night before the race some sort of artic cold front that could have frozen hell over multiple times came through and dumped more than a foot of snow on the course. Along with that, earlier the day before it was sleeting so underneath the snow was a layer of ice. Now being a team from Texas, at first it was really cool! This would be a completely new experience for us and being the kids we were, all we wanted to do was play. The effect of it being a national championship race was completely washed… or I guess snowed in? and we no longer had our heads in it. So I raced myself into a wonderful 79th place after running a near 16 minute 4k and didn’t even care. All I wanted to do was have a snowball fight, which we had back at the hotel later that night with a team called the “buffalo chips”. Needless to say that was our favorite part of the trip. We never did a USATF race after that; from then on we became an AAU team due to their habit of holding races in the warmer climate such as Orlando, Florida.
http://www.usatf.org/events/2005/USATFJuniorOlympicXCChampionships/results/national/Youth.asp

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