Called Out

So last Thursday’s morning outdoor boot camp consisted of hill sprints.  We had 3 minutes to sprint less than 1/10 of a mile and then jog or walk back down.  Then at the bottom we had to patiently wait until the 3 minutes expired and then do the next sprint.  We did this ten times.

Unfortunately (for me) the day prior was spent at a local amusement park where I accidentally (I swear!) was tricked into eating a big tray of french fries topped with cheese and BACON.  I am salivating just remembering the feast.  However, I spent most of boot camp thinking I was going to hurl.  Actually, when I first got out of bed that morning my first thought was, “holy hell, what did I drink last night?!?” then, “why would I drink a night before boot camp???” then finally realizing, “holy crap I didn’t drink – this must be a FOOD HANGOVER!”  I was fighting the urge to pull over and throw up the entire drive to the gym.  And these sprints weren’t helping.

Somehow sometime around sprint 7 my stomach miraculously settled down.  I thought I’d given the last few sprints my all.  But the instructor was on to me… and maybe it’s something he’s been watching closely for a while now and only just decided to call me out on it… but he came to me while we were waiting for our 3 minutes to expire and said, “are you treating this like a marathon or like an all-out sprint?” I laughed and said, “marathon, I guess.”  The thing is his classes are HARD.  And by the end of the week between that and all I do on my own and teaching my own spinning classes, I’m pretty fatigued.  But I’m never on the floor dying.  I’m never puking (unless I’ve eaten the cheese fries).  I’m always near the first to finish our activities and I pretty much blow through everything like it’s no big deal.  But here’s the deal – last year I was ONLY running (because I was training for a May marathon) and the first weekend in June I ran a 5-miler.  Finished it in 42:12ish.  This year I only ran the half in May and had been doing spinning and weight lifting (not bootcamp) all winter/early spring.  Same June 5-miler.  45-minutes and a lot of change.  I was expecting to be closer to 40!  Yes, it was an extremely hot, humid and muggy morning, but still.  It was my second slowest time since I’d started running the course back in 2010.  I was embarrassed and disappointed.  So needless to say, after my response that I wasn’t giving the sprints my all, he began following me up the hill, sprinting and taunting me the entire way to push harder.  Welcome to my life.

So I’m wondering if it’s me not believing in myself.  Or is it something I’ve learned from marathoning / distance running about pacing myself because you just want to finish.  But I know I’m not giving 100%.  I’m not sprinting as hard as I can every single time we sprint.  Even if I’m beating everyone else, I’m still not beating myself.  And I know it.  And I need to push through it.

It was right for my instructor to tell me my barrier to breaking through this plateau is mental, because it 100% is.  I want to be a sub-25 minute 5K runner.  For all intensive purposes, I ought to be!  I want to be thinner, stronger and faster.  But I’ve been doing all these workouts:  boot camp, running, lifting, spinning, and seeing almost no difference in my race times.  Granted, I haven’t raced all that much up till now this year, so maybe this fall will bring some great new times, but that aside I know I have some work to do to break through to the other side of my capabilities.

I’ve coincidentally come across some good & related articles the past few days about this very subject:

http://www.thehybridathlete.com/why-you-suck-and-look-the-same/

http://www.runnersworld.com/sports-psychology/how-to-break-a-running-plateau?cm_mmc=Twitter-_-RunnersWorld-_-Content-Training-_-MentalBarriers

Have you ever “hit the wall?”  What did you do to push through it?