Anxiety Ridden

Stress... the single biggest fun killer out there.

The best suggestion fall into two categories:

Work within your limitations.

Plan accordingly.

It seems your limits are injury related. Fitness is defined by physical limitations. And, your limitations may still be your foot. And, the loss of the ability to train to match your perceived level of fitness needed to run is also a result of a past foot injury.

Injuries commonly cause as much mental stress and loss of confidence as they do loss of actual loss of fitness. The fact is this... fitness level is very easily recovered with increased frequency of training (but NOT intensity or volume).

Two thing you notice trying to get back into shape after an injury.

1) Your HR will increase significantly.... specially when you compare it to your PE.

2) You will want to try and increase intensity to compensate for this low PE (Percieved Effort).

Two things you need to do to avoid potential pitfalls from the aforementioned issues.

1) Don't increase intensity... this only increases potential for re-injury and/or inability to recover sufficiently before the next training session.

2) Don't increase volume (i.e., distance) at a rate faster than allows you to recover COMPLETELY within 24 hrs.

FREQUENCY of training will be the key to faster improvement. Shorter 2 training sessions per day will be better than 1 long and hard training session. The key is recovery time needed to continue with training from a day to day basis.

When you say... it's hard to get back into shape... well, yes... and that is primarilly because your cardio vascular issues are not use to "pushing" the amount of oxygen (vis-a-vis blood volume) to the muscles. The faster way to get this to happen is to increase blood volume... this requires increase frequency of training sessions... BUT avoiding re-injury and/or increased training intensity and only VERY moderate standardized increases in volume.

Chances are IF YOU MAINTAIN A CONSISTENT TRAINING PROGRAM you will be back to your previous fitness level within 2-4 weeks.

As for hills, well... forget about the hills... walk the hills if necessary... concentrate on 90% of the rest of the course. Never let something that represents a very small part of the race to dictate the training plan. Plan for what consistutes a majority of the course.

Anxiety is a result of lack of mental preparation... and mental failure is caused by concentrating on your weaknesses instead of your strengths. Never let the hard parts make your forget about the easy parts. Confidence is built around your strong points... not weak points. And, confidence is gained through planning and consistancy in training.

And, for goodness sakes... stop stressing and start having some fun... even in the training sessions. Once you start taking things much more light heartedly, you'll see your confidence and fitness level increase seamingly without effort.

Good Luck.

Joe Moya

Edited by Joe M 2005-05-30 9:21 AM

Try to chill out and accept your own limitations.  Do your best on the swim and the bike and do what you can do on the run/walk or just plan on walking the run.  Have a great time and try to enjoy yourself. What you don't want to do is get hurt worse and ruin the rest of your season.  Take care and I look forward to your race report -SMO  PS you will feel terrific when you finish!!

smile more often - it will reduce your stress - have confidence in your training , you can coast when you need to, trust the race organizers, if you get in a real jam there will be people to help - I just did my first Oly and almost freaked at the beginnig of the swim - I have done many 1800 yd swims in the pool but my emotional mind almost over rode my logical mind and thoughts of stopping crossed my mind 200 yds into the 1500 meters swim after looking at those orange buoys - 46 year old clydesdales deal with the same issues - hey, smile and have some fun, 'cause - it is!

I am a firm believer that the first race at a new distance should be about a finish and nothing more. You know you can finish even if you have to walk so have fun! Once you've done it once, the next time you can shoot for a finish time! I am not a great runner and I still walk an occasional hill in a race. Sometimes I found that I was expending so much energy trying to run up the blasted thing that it affected the rest of my run. The famous marathon guru, Jeff Galloway, actually suggests walk breaks for all levels of runners to improve overall performance.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Especially for taking the time and effort to be so comprehensive. I really appreciate all of your advice and will take it!
Rhonda

Rhonda,

I'm with you...doing my first longer race on Saturday.....1/4 Ironman....like an Oly but with a shorter swim. The swim stresses me out and I keep thinking of not going. Really I don't care how long it takes me. I want to finish and have fun. I am putting that into my plan and working hard at having positive thoughts..and feel okay about going as slow as necessary on the swim.

Lots of people have shared great advice....enjoy the race and have fun!