I'm thankful to be surrounded by supportive coach, training partners, teammates, and friends. I've been hard on myself after last Sunday's race in Montreal. Despite an outpouring of encouragement from everyone, I had trouble differentiating reasonable rationalizing of my performance versus simply making excuses for myself. It is a fine line seperating those two.
I had a long talk with coach SZ. One of the first questions she asked me was why is more than one good races not enough to be convinced in my capability yet a single bad race is sufficient to shake my confidence to the core? Good question. In fact, it is something I already asked myself. In March, I won a field sprint for the first time at Squiggy and held my own during training camp with my teammates. Only two weeks ago, I skated strong at Texas Road Rash and sustained a breakaway from the pack. Not to mention weeks of good practices with Toronto Inline Skating Club. All of these are positive signs that my training is working the way it should. Last weekend, when my body was not recovering between hard efforts and when I could not respond to attacks, I became very concerned. Why? Because those are supposedly my strengths and they failed me. Nevermind that I overlooked the fact that I was sick three days before the race. Nor that I had trouble staying upright because my stablizing muscles gave up in the cold condition. My focus was solely on not delivering when it counted and outskated by my competitors.
I told SZ that it comes down to a fragile confidence. I see good performances as exceptionally lucky flukes and bad performances as the norm. This is a skewed assessment of my ability stemming from years of being the slowest skater at TISC with aspiration to race competitively. In short, a poser. SZ and I agree that we need to work on my confidence in skating. Half the battle is believing in myself. Confidence will come as I accumulate more solid performances.
SZ related a few stories of her own recent race experiences and they really help me to see things in a new perspective. When I think back on all my best races, they are the ones that I approached with very specific goals and race plans to accomplish. "Hang on to such and such for as long as I can" is NOT a race plan. Racing with a purpose is being in control of my own race. Taken to an extreme, it's about not just reacting to whatever the pack does but taking an active role so the pack reacts to me. More than anything, this realization lifts me away from the depth of self-doubt.
I had a trail skating session with long-time training partner JaS yesterday. It has been far too long since we skated together and I really miss it. I can always count on him for giving me unbiased feedback on all things skating-related. We chased some bikes and just skated for the fun of it. He made a few observations on my technique, both positive and negative. The Good: deeper outside edge setdown and more pronounced weight transfer. The Bad: high cadence. The Ugly: small recovery and lack of power in my push. His observations reflect exactly what I focus on and the training condition since the season began. When we first skated outdoor, I was fresh off a rigourous winter of weight training. There was good power from my push but video showed upper body was not over my supporting leg. I made a conscious effort to adjust and is now too far the other way. As for the high cadence, I'm very aware of it due to weeks of training in very windy condition. I must make a mental note to slow down my cadence so I can skate with a bigger recovery.
Despite being an individual sport, a skater is never alone. They believe in me. Now is my turn to believe in myself.
One of the hardest things is to build self-confidence.
Reading your report on Montreal my first thought was: wow is this Bear Grylls reporting? Sure it was a 'bad' race but what happens then? Nothing. You survived, you are stronger now.
Trust in yourself bit more and remember your good races, like Squiggy and Texas this year.
Ah and here is one of Andrew's blog entries for you: http://andrewlove.org/blog/?p=703
Have fun!
Posted by: Gabor Kmetyko | May 14, 2010 at 05:10