Visualization

Straightened out the laundry situation and got myself to the gym after work for an easy 4 on the treadmill after work.

First of all, major kudos to anyone who works out after work. First, you have to motivate yourself to change out of work clothes and into gym clothes. Then you have to not eat everything that's not nailed down in your apartment. Then you have to go to the gym. But it's not over yet. Because once you get there, you have to deal with the 8 million other New Yorkers who are also at the gym after work. I walked in tonight around 8:15 and there were 3 other people in line for treadmills ahead of me. Infuriating. There are probably 25 treadmills at the gym, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that in the mornings, I'm often the second or third person there (those anorexic girls sure wake up early. Possibly because beer has calories and they therefore didn't drink 50 of them the night before. That must be nice). To have to wait for a treadmill was unconscionable. But the Yankees were on TV, so I did.

Anyway, so even though I was in the air conditioned gym for my run, I did not have my choice of treadmill which meant I did not have that little personal fan I've spoken so highly of in the past. To distract myself from the heat, I decide to spend my run thinking about the finish at Chicago. I got this idea from our high school track coach, Mr. Yedowitz. I remember once, during the winter of our sophomore year, Coach Yed instructed us all to lie down on the floor of the multi purpose room and close our eyes while he turned off the lights (this is not going where you think it is). He then lead us through some mental exercises about picturing ourselves in our respective races, etc etc. I remember picturing the hurdles, and in this visualization, I finally nailed the right pattern of footfalls between hurdles. The next day, at the big meet, I thought about that visualization exercise as I stood on the starting line. The gun went off and I cleared the first hurdle. Then, I did not nail the footfalls between the first and second hurdles. Actually, I don't even know if I thought about that at the start. I have no idea what happened at that meet, but I can tell you, unless I visualized myself sitting on the floor of the field house at Rockland Community College for 6 hours, consuming several thousands of calories in preparation for an event that lasted 10 seconds (fine, 20 if there were 2 heats), this kind of mental stretching didn't do shit for me in high school.

However, at the gym tonight, I started thinking about what it would be like to come down to the last mile in Chicago and look at my watch and know I was going to break 4 hours. I upped my speed a few notches. I pictured Nina, wasted, cheering in the finish chute (I assume you'll be pregaming for the Hanson concert, no?). A little faster. I imagined myself crossing the finish line and pulling a Mia Hamm (see above), which I'll try hard not to do in real life since my abs aren't quite comparable to hers. I looked down at the gauges on the treadmill and realized I was running 7:30s! The powers of visualization at work!

Except that's the worst plan ever because if I run the first 4 miles in Chicago at 7:30 I won't make it much further than 5.

In all seriousness though, it pumped me up and made me super psyched and maybe I'll even do a sit up or two tonight, I'm so inspired. So thanks, Coach Yed.

Ed. Note: Apparently this is a picture of Brandi Chastain, not Mia Hamm. My apologies to these athletes, as well as to any fans of women's professional soccer and/or feminists who may be reading this blog (there's only one of you) for my misidentification of what is, apparently, "women's lib personified." Drrk.