Hi all,
Just the other day I was listening to a conversation about placing and ranking at meets. A comment about "placing", that wasn't meant to have any real significance, caught my ear. I generally don't think about placing at all anymore. To me, placing isn't even on my radar. I usually am just thinking about the times I want to get for each race and new PRs (personal records) I want to set. I feel as if that helps me stay less stressed, especially as I have progressed in my running. I find comparing yourself to other athletes can destroy you mentally. When you can get away from that and just start focusing on bettering yourself, you can start to alleviate that unnecessary stress and really buckle down and make yourself stronger.
All through junior high I had a 24-0 record in XC and very few second place ribbons in track. I never thought of myself as better than anyone else, lucky maybe, but not better. When my freshman year of XC rolled around I had told my parents that I didn't want to come in first and I didn't want to put that pressure on my high school years of feeling like I had to "place 1st". I had always loved to run but during my 8th grade year I had come to stress about what place I might get. My first high school XC race, I placed top 10, I was extremely disappointed. As the season went on and indoor and outdoor track passed, I quickly realized that this was a different playing field and that there was little need for me to have stressed over placing 1st as I did in junior high, there were fast girls everywhere! . There has been many meets that I have not performed well at because I let the thought of "placing in front of another girl" creep into my head. I had to learn to accept that there will always be someone faster and stronger than me so that I could keep moving forward. I seem to have always known what I was capable of doing on a race day and I always set high expectations for myself.
Here it is my junior year and I have been to Nationals twice, not bad for a little girl from Lincoln, Maine. This was something that I had never even dreamed about. It just seemed to have happened when I changed my mindset into wanting to be the best that I can be. Having this mindset has helped me overcome many other obstacles besides running and it has strengthened me as an individual. Now when I race, I give little thought about the ribbons, medals, etc. All I hope for is to better my times. There are some meets that are more strategic than others, but even then I do not like to think about what place I want to get. My Coach was just telling the team today that we need to focus less on who our competition is and focus more on getting ourselves stronger and staying healthy.
Best of luck to all of the trackies at upcoming meets! PVCs and States are just around the corner!
Before I end this blog, I wanted to give another quick shoutout to all of the seniors this year! Alli Pickering, Jordan Hernandez, Lauren Stoops, Giorgia Calcagno, Tristan Butterfield, Samantha Round, Andrew Lewis, Emma Honey and Mckenzie Peterson. (I hope I didn't forget anyone!) I hope that you all continue to run happy and healthy!
-Tia
