Note
slept:6.0 weight:129lbs
Had an early morning date on the golf course, first-round match in the club's match play championship. Not sure why I signed up for it, since I found a few years ago that I didn't enjoy golf when it got too serious. I think this time it was part of my effort to meet some new people this year.
So, anyway, I'm driving up to the course and I'm feeling nervous. And I'm feeling stupid for feeling nervous, I mean it's just a round of golf, so I spend the 20-minute drive thinking about nervousness and what it does to you and how to deal with. And trying to come up with something that will calm me down. (Of course a little nervousness is often a good thing, shows you care, but this was a bit much.)
So I think back to times I've been nervous before sports events. Most of those have been before O' events, but the problem certainly declined over the years, run enough events and pretty soon A meets are no big deal, and then national championships are no reason to panic. But international events can still fire up the nerves. And I still haven't found a way to deal with it, other than to keep competing so that eventually even the main events become somewhat routine.
But this was just a little local club match, and my stomach was still rumbling.
And then I thought back to the Western States 100 Mile in June, 1993. First time at the event, the grand-daddy of the 100-milers, across the Sierra from Squaw Vally to Auburn, CA. It wasn't my first 100-miler, I'd finished four others out West that were just as hard, but I remember as we were driving east on I-80 up into the mountains and I got a sense of the scale of what lay ahead, I was literally shaking. Nervousness, anxiety, a healthy dose of fear.
And I remember at some point I said to myself, Would you rather be coming up here to run tomorrow, or coming up here to crew for someone else who was going to run?
And the answer, quite immediately, was that I wanted to run. And so the next question was, Well, if you are doing what you want to be doing, why are you nervous?
And somehow that settled me right down.
And I thought about the golf match, and I asked myself, Why are you doing this? Is it for some form of hoped-for athletic accomplishment?
And the answer was, No, I see it as a nice way to meet someone I wouldn't otherwise meet.
And the conclusion from that was, And that's making you nervous?
I calmed right down, and a little while later the drive off the first tee was dead center. And the company was good, very nice guy. And as fate would have it, he had lived in the Tahoe area for many years, working building ski lifts, had worked at Squaw Valley a bunch, had even watched the start of Western States most years, certainly the couple times I'd been there. A small world...
hike (with pack, 8 pounds) 39:52 [2]
shoes: Air Max Trail 09/05
Out just before dinner, direct route to the top of Toby, same as last Thursday but didn't have the willpower to put the extra 5 pounds in the pack. So a little quicker, heart rate a touch lower at the top (170).
trail running 35:58 [3]
shoes: Air Max Trail 09/05
Then ran back the round-about way, striding out more, back to more normal pace, feeling reasonably good except for the pack bouncing around a bt more than I cared for.
More pleasant day-dreaming, including thinking back to Sunday and the trip over to Clint's fine meet at Crandalls, and how if Phil had gone and we'd driven together, then we surely would have stopped on the way home for a nutritional break, something similar I'm sure to our stop after the Billygoat, when he got a large bag of something he claimed were "health food chips," I mean, I think they had a little bit of whole grain in them though they were mainly fat and salt, and I got a rather large container of some delicious ice cream, all packed full of beneficial calcium and protein.
And I thought about this for a while and decided that tonight might be desert time again, have to follow Wyatt's advice and not get the weight too low (and it was 126.5 after the run).
So that got me most of the way home, reality intruding just a bit towards the end in the way of little aches and just general tiredness.
And then I get home and see that Phil had been laid low by food poisoning on Sunday evening, which is something you shouldn't wish on anybody, and I'm thinking, damn, he should have come to Crandalls, at least he would have had a good base of health food chips to fall back upon.
Off to Sugarloaf Frostee.... :-) :-)