Controlling What You Can Control

 I hadn't planned on writing a post about yesterday's half-marathon, but sometimes life/the Universe provides you with material that you just cannot ignore.  So here is a story of yesterday's race.

For the past three months I have had a training schedule attached to my fridge door outlining my training plan for yesterday's race.  Dutifully each week I looked at the plan, laced up and ran when I needed to and even rested when I was supposed to.  All according to plan.  I started to ride my bike a lot more and felt that the cross-training this provided was helping me with cardio endurance and mental endurance as well.  Another check in the books as far as training and preparation goes.  Although my diet has leaned towards being healthy for the most part, I even made some tweaks there and started to embrace a plant-based diet which also felt like it was contributing to better physical output and recovery.  Check, check, check.

As race day approached, I worked on tapering and preparing my mental game - I had a time goal in mind (there is no runner out there that doesn't have a time goal, even if they say they don't) and also was trying to remind myself that no matter what, showing up at the line and doing the run was a victory in itself.  I struggle with post-race let-down regarding performance and so this was a big piece of work for me to gnaw on.  I think that I would give myself a half check-mark on that one...work in progress for sure. 

The day before the race I had a nice walk in the morning, followed by puttering around the house, checking the race day weather probably 100 times and looking at the route map probably 100 times as well.  I laid out my clothes, ensured my watch was charged, drank a boatload of water throughout the day and ate a nourishing meal.  I topped off the day by watching an inspiring movie about a woman who ran the toughest race in the world the Marathon de Sables - basically a six-day ultra race that is the equivalent of running six marathons back-to-back in the Sahara desert...compared to that, a half-marathon is a piece of cake!  I managed to get to bed early, and according to my Fitbit, even had a good night's sleep.

I share all of this to demonstrate how well I managed all of the things I could control.  Race day started as most do, early and with a plan - eat something and get to the streetcar to arrive at the race site an hour early, as requested by the organizers.  This is where the uncontrollable came into play.

I missed one streetcar but hopped on the very next one, which was great until it went out of service not far from where we started.  I almost managed to get onboard the streetcar that I'd missed but wasn't fast enough (reserving energy for the race), so waited patiently for the next one, which I assumed would be along any minute.  Any minute turned into about 30 minutes before another streetcar arrived.  I gratefully climbed aboard starting to think about timing and how this was going to affect my usual pre-race routine.  Suddenly there was an urgency to getting to the start that is usually not an issue.  A few more stressed-out runners also caught this same streetcar, and we all nodded in sympathy to each other, as we all knew that we were cutting it close.  This was further impacted when it was announced that the streetcar we were on was short-turning and a bus would be by shortly.  It was now approximately 8:10 with a race start of 8:45 - what in the world was happening?  Suddenly my race hopes went from a finish time to actually getting to the start and being able to run it.  With no bus in sight, a few of us jumped on the next streetcar that came by and rode it as far as we could before departing and walk/running to the starting line.  Despite the fact that we were closing in on 8:45 we were all remarkably calm and it was reassuring to share this whole crazy experience with others who were also feeling very much at the mercy of the uncontrollable.  Fortunately we all did make it to the start and were able to run our races and I hope that they both had great runs.

What did I learn through all of this?  You truly can only control so many things in life and then there are the moments, situations, events that truly are out of your control.  Despite not being able to control those aspects, how you show up and move through them is what you still can control and is what will help you arrive at your ultimate outcome.  Trust me, I was freaking out inside as the clock was ticking down but I managed to stay open to options and to help and to believing that things were going to work out, even if they did not end up looking the way that I had planned.  Being able to let go of a set plan and outcome is hard for me - I am a planner and love feeling like I have a good idea of what things will look like at the end of the day.  So today really challenged me in a few ways and I feel like coming through this to run my race and have a great day was a win and definitely a big check in the accomplishment box.  

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