The Power of adrenaline

So today marks one week from my last cross country race of the season, and what a race it was. Wind blasting and rain dumping all of us athletes struggled to stay warm in the stormy weather. We had teams from all over gather to compete. Them started before us at 10 am and girls started at 11.

Hearts beating out of our chests at 10:59, we waited for that starter gone to go off. My stomach felt upset, but weirdly excited at the same time. I was pretty nervous going into it mainly because my knee had been bothering me all week, but I knew nothing was going to change that. It is what it is it thought. Worst case scenario I would have to stop mid-race because of too much pain.

BAM, gun sounded. We took off. I started out conservatively, my knee hurt. "whatever don't think about that," I told myself. The pain wore off. I settled into my pace.

Soon enough I decided it was go time, and worked my way up through the field of racers around me. Lungs burning I pushed past to where the course shoots into hilly trails.

My body hurt, but this race I stayed mentally positive. Every time a negative thought tried to creep in, I pushed it away. "You're having a great race," someone shouted to me. I wasn't sure if that was true or not, but I let it fuel me and I kept repeating that to myself through-out each 100 yards.

About half a mile to go, my calf started cramping, and my knee really started to act up. In previous races this would have crushed me. I would have let it get into my head and instead of positive thoughts "this sucks and I hate endurance sports why do I do this to myself" might have been there. But not today. Somehow I channeled a deeper energy and in a weird way, embraced the pain. I passed four girls on my way to the finish and had a blast doing it.

True, I could barely walk after, and my leg wouldn't work for several days but that's the beauty of adrenaline. Somehow your body kind of just figures out what to do...crazy right?

Anyway maybe I'm just the crazy one, but my mind has constantly been going back to that race. Your body can accomplish anything...its your mind you have to convince.