Suck It Up Buttercup!

I read a terrific blog post the other day – On Success.  I highly recommend you read the post.  Go read it, and come back.

Or if you are strapped for time, here’s a part of the post the really resonated with me:

Successful athletes step up – to the challenge, to the race, to the competition. The race director says no wetsuit, they say no problem. It’s just another obstacle to overcome on race day. They are confident they can overcome anything because they are prepared both mentally and physically. Many athletes show up to race day physically prepared. Few are mentally prepared. Perhaps because they don’t step up in training. It’s raining, I’ll run on the treadmill. So, will the race be on the treadmill too? It’s windy, I’ll ride the trainer. Will they cancel the bike if the wind exceeds 10 mph? Step up so you are physically prepared and so you can learn to be mentally prepared for dealing with whatever is thrown your way. 

The weather in June has been less than ideal.  Last week our Tuesday night ride was called due to rain.  Big, fat drops of rain.  This week the skies were cloudy, grey and nasty.  Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I pulled into my garage after work those big, fat drops of rain started to fall again.  Sheesh!  The rain drops fell off and on during the 30-45 minutes I had at home before my bike workout.  I thought there might be a chance the rain would end so I changed and loaded my gear and my bike into the car.  As I put the bike on the bike rack I noticed that I still had quite a bit of dust on my bike.  It picked up a bunch of dust as we drove away from our campground in Highwood a couple of weeks ago.  Hmm.  Must remember to clean that off….

Then as I pulled out of the garage I realized that there was all this stuff falling on the car.  Rain!  Drat!  Our meeting spot was only 10 minutes away from my house so I knew that the situation wouldn’t be any better on the bike.  The car had been loaded up though, and I had a few friends I needed to see at the workout so I forged on. 

As soon as I parked the car I was told to just hurry up and go, don’t stop to talk!  Wow, it was wet.  And kind of cold too.  On the plus side it was knocking off all that dust on my bike!

The workout was supposed to be bike/run repeats.  One 5K loop on the bike, a quick run, then repeat.  I set off on the bike and realized that there is a fundamental problem with wearing glasses while riding in the rain.  It is hard to see!  Oh well, suck it up Buttercup!  What if it is raining at the race on Saturday?  I can do this…  I rode fairly tentatively as I didn’t want to wipe out on a corner on the slick road.  Wow, seriously, this rain was getting intense!  Then….what??  Is that hail???

Yikes!  I made it back to my car, changed from bike shoes to run shoes and got running.  The rain was most definitely not letting up.  Where is the line between sucking it up and knowing when to call it quits?  I think we were there.  Luckily Angie felt that way too, so one bike/run repeat it was.  On my short drive home I felt like I was hacking up a lung.  Oh well, it was definitely a learning experience and character builder out in the monsoon and hail today!