The icing on the cake

First, I just want to share some good news! Remember my post about Atticus? Well, he's getting a bike! Unfortunately, he didn't win the bike in the voting; but thanks to the donations and the sharing of his story, they were able to raise enough money for Atticus to buy his special needs bike. They have to custom order it just for him, so his mom said that when she has pictures, she'll share them. I'm so excited for him!

---

It's hard to believe this is the last week before my goal race. My goal 10K is a week from tomorrow! After my awesome five-miler on Wednesday, I'm feeling pretty confident. I keep reminding myself that anything could happen, though, so I don't want to get overly confident. When I first started training, I felt like I had so much time to prepare. And now it's nearly here!

I was listening to Matt Fitzgerald on a podcast during my run this morning, and he was talking about "choking" during a race (figuratively, not literally). That is my biggest problem with racing! I tend to do really well during training, but then I choke at the race itself. Fitzgerald said that women especially will put so much pressure on themselves to hit a certain goal, and that pressure doesn't usually serve well for racing. I've been talking up this race for MONTHS, and I definitely feel a ton of pressure to hit my goal at the race (not from others, but from myself). My best races have all been where I didn't have a goal time, or where I just kind of let the race happen.

Read more »