Peak Performance Week? or Confidence Shaker....

I was raised with two brothers.  I think my mom was an overachiever in the late 60's as she had three kids in 28 months.  I am the youngest and was the resident tomboy.  I shot baskets on the driveway for hours as a kid and played kick the can with the best of the best.  I may have been overweight, but my love for running with the boys in those days was not deterred by that.  As I grew up, I found the world of softball.  My weight was to my advantage at the plate as in junior high I would come to know the pure joy of nailing a line drive deep into center field as my brothers would cheer me on by my nickname coined by them,"Big Tomahawk."  My glory days of sports.  Later on, I would play high school ball and grow into my token position, catcher.  I would learn to pick off the runner at second, and toss hand signals to the pitcher.  In my later high school years though, this would change.  I was bullied by another member of my team, someone jockeying for position on the team.  Admittedly, she had things I didn't.  I could not run fast, my weight slowed me down.  She was part of a legendary family in the world of softball in my hometown, I was not.

The love of this game for me personally ended one fateful afternoon on the practice field.  The coach fed the pitching machine as I was up to bat.  My bully was nearby mocking me on every pitch so much so that I could not hit a thing.  Perfect strikes from a pitching machine and I could make contact with absolutely nothing.  Pitch after pitch, whiff after whiff.  Little by little my confidence gone.  For the rest of the season I would fall farther and farther down the roster on the team as the bullying continued and I think in retrospect, I completely stopped trying as in my heart of hearts I felt defeated.  This would be my last season of softball after 12 years of playing a game I truly loved.  Part of me was simply left at home plate on the practice fields that day.  I was 17.

Fast forward to my adult routine athletic endeavor, Orangetheory Fitness.  This week was Peak Performace Week at Orangetheory.  Five challenges, one each day.  This is a twice a year offering at OTF designed to help you see how far you have come.  I remember my first one, 60 pounds heavier.  I had only been training there for two months.  I had so much anxiety over it.  It felt a bit like those moments up to bat.  I was terrified.  I was an adult now.  I had no bullies outside of the spirit of failure that lived between my own two ears.  I did the challenges anyway, as my trainers were fairly insistent I do it, and got my results.  I had done the one mile challenge in just under 12 minutes.  That was two years ago and was a personal best in life.  Even as a kid I had never run a mile faster than that.  I decided at that point I would take it and jump off from there.

I have since had three more peak performace weeks. January was by far my best.  I was humbled to walk away with three wins for females 40 and up, fastest 500m row (1:27), fastest 2000m row (6:40) and highest reps in the body weighted exercise challenge, 4 minutes (126).  The other challenges I would not win.  They were running challenges, furthest distance in 24 minutes and fastest mile.  It didn't matter, my running would come in time.  Besides I felt like this was such a huge achievement for me after a lifetime of obesity and just 17 months after a hip fracture and surgery.

This Peak Performace Week was completely different though.  Just like those days of softball, my confidence was completely shaken and admittedly, my spirit a bit broken.  I lost my mom suddenly three weeks ago for no good reason, I had traveled to Florida to sort through that, and immediately after, I had a vacation planned.  In two weeks, I had been checked out of my own life and out of my routine.  Orangetheory kept me sane in Florida, long bike rides kept my mind calm in the Outer Banks on vacation.  However, dedicated focused training and planning for Peak Performance Week was just not in the cards.  I entered the studio this week with lots of members offering friendly banter and  discussing me "defending my titles".  The reality was my head was not in the game just then.  I thought about just not recording anything, or not really participating in the challenges.  My brain was busy filling with excuses. I could say I "wanted to give someone else a chance to win."  Yes that would do it.  It would be a lie though.  My fear of doing poorly was really the culprit.

I began to consider how many times it was that we take our own shaken confidences and allow them to simply take ourselves out of the game.  Fear of losing, fear of looking silly or someone else's negative opinion that tell us it would be easier to just walk away.  I had to reason with myself that the very worst thing that would happen would be that maybe this time I would not hit the leader board.  Certainly that was not fatal.  Maybe my head was not in the game but it was time to as they say, fake it til I made it.

We arrived at day one.  The 500m row.  I pulled off three seconds slower than last time, enough for the win, but not a PR.  I had not beaten myself.  The same held true of the 2000m row, only that was a full 20 seconds slower, a win, but kind of a hollow victory when I had not beaten or even come close to my own time.  The 2000m row was Thursday.  By then I was frustrated I was not where I had been in January and just wanted to find my way back to me.  I even considered canceling my Friday class as I felt the crowning blow of being a slow runner might be more than I could take for the challenge of the fastest mile.  Again, feeling the confidence shaker attempting to pull me out of the game.  The belief that failure was somehow final and absolutely fatal.

I went in yesterday anyway.  I had several members of the motivational team I run waiting on me wanting to know how I did and letting them down was a lot harder than walking away because I felt so much doubt in my own ability.  As I got on the treadmill, and it was go time, I started at 6.1mph, increasing throughout the whole mile ending at 7.5 for the last tenth. I finished in 9:12, a personal best in life.  Not quite olympic speed, but for me a best nonetheless.  I stared at the readout on the tread when I was done, admittedly a bit tearful with all that had happened in the last three weeks, and conquering my worst event with a PR that meant more to me than any spot on the leader board.  In this moment, I realized that sometimes life is hard.  Events and other people will shake you to your core.  We have a choice, give up or fight it out.  I certainly have done my share of both.  Although I can never get back the last line drive I hit deep into center field, I can hold on to that 9:12 and realize that the best is truly yet to come....Sub 9 minute mile....You will not elude me forever.  Oh and as to the game of softball?  I think it is time I challenge myself to a trip to the batting cages, in my Cubs gear. Once a Chicago girl, always a Chicago girl.