August 21, 2009
Jennifer S.

We’ve been seeing the “mental strategy” on our training calendar and likely have noted this in the back of our mind as something we focus on already while we are training. But seeing the written description of this in the past week has really hit me as far as how much mental energy goes into these types of endurance events as well as the muscular output to keep you moving.

I’ve taken the chance to bring this mental strategizing into my training sessions for the past week and a half because I’ve had to limit my intensity and type of activity due to a recent surgery. I took a 4-mile walk (close to Edy pace!) the other afternoon hoping to get a workout in “in the heat” as Yoli’s calendar suggests. It was about 90 degrees with significant humidity as I set out. I started the walk thinking how irritated I was that I couldn’t actually be running or biking, but then tried to curb that by realizing I could focus and plan a little more while working out at the slowed pace. I focused hard on keeping my walk pace and breathing steady and even found it easier to time my “fuel” and “hydration” points. Half way through my walk I started thinking about the surgery I had and all the planning (mental and other) I had done prior to it….long story short anesthesia and I don’t agree! I had successfully made it through the 3 ½ hour surgery…high BG levels, nausea, convincing the nurses to let me monitor and dose my correction insulin with my pump – and it occurred to me that if I could make it through something so ultimately scary to me with enough planning before hand, then doing the same thing for our event would be most beneficial. The mental preparation is key.

Since I was walking, I imagined myself moving through T2 – starting to urge my legs to move like running legs after just completing 56 miles on a bike. Thinking positively that this is the last leg of the Tri – planning my best fuel times and hydration times and how to remind myself to do these things. I successfully completed my first sprint tri a few weeks ago (only brawn in this photo!), but completely fell off the fuel/hydration plan that I had set. I’m assuming it was race day nerves/excitement etc. So learning from this and getting back to my planning for our race I have decided to wear 2 watches. My Garmin for timing/speed/distance etc. and a stop watch that I’ll use only for that purpose. Allowing me to be alerted to time for fuel or hydration. I also thought it would be great to have a mental mantra of sorts that I can bring to mind at the times that I will fuel and hydrate and a time to do a mental analysis of how I’m feeling, etc. I’ve found that sometimes this just falls away when I’m so focused on the goal of the training session – not reminded until that feeling that we all know takes hold as Sara talked about in her last Blog – the lows!

The completion of this event together means we are all planning and strategizing a little differently. I think we’ve learned a lot from each other about Diabetes control, but also we’ve talked a lot about how we mentally think before and during events.
It has strengthened the message that Yoli has taught us…. that both our brains and our brawn need to be working together to finish this as strong and visible women with Diabetes!