{rest when you are done}

There are about seven weeks left until Sectionals in Golden, CO.  My training started with a couple months of sheer anxiety.  What the hell was I thinking?  I can't compete like this, the unknown, the strength required, I can't compete with the women that will be there.   I've competed in other fitness endeavors.  Several half-marathons and a figure competition.  No problem I knew what to expect when I got there.  Run 13.1 miles.  Stand on stage in a bikini and pose.  But the games?  Yikes.  Not knowing what I will have to do until the night before terrifies me.  What if I'm not strong enough?  What if it is one of the couple skills I can't do yet?  What if it is a weight I am just short of moving?  What if it is a skill that I am not quite as skilled at?  I have decided for all of those concerns all I can do is continue to train, eat well and do my best.  Instead, my coach has me working on the weakest part of my game.  It isn't the strength, that is coming along nicely.  It isn't the mastery of skills.  That is repetition and I still have time to improve.  What is holding me back from my potential?  My mental game.  I have to strengthen my mental game.  When the lactic acid has built up in my quads and shoulders and I can't do one more  thruster I have to do five more.  When I can't breathe because I feel like my body is going at my body's version of the speed of light, I push through it and keep going.  Oxygen is overrated.  I have figured out that as bad as it feels when you are on your 13th rep and you can't breathe it feels worse when you stop and it is harder to start again than it is to keep going.  I just now realized that is what I always say about running.  I never stop in the middle of a run because it hurts worse to stop and start than to just keep going.  A slow jog, or slog, is faster than walking.  A slow squat is faster than stopping to catch your breath.  So I am learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable.  I try to imagine my coach or my husband in my ear telling me not to stop.  I try to remember that the fewer times I stop to rest the sooner I will finish and get to rest.  So I try to live by the words of a very wise man . . .

"YOU CAN REST WHEN YOU ARE DONE!"

~Coach Buf