Blogs : Mike Mockovak

Confidence

There is something very unique about me in regards to running. Id say 80% of my running I do is simply to get better, but there is that little bit of running that I do where I pretend I am someone else. On my mp3 player, I have about 10 olympic races downloaded onto it as a .mp3 file. So as I am running, its like I am in the race. Once in awhile, maybe once or twice a week, usually at night, like midnight, I run one or two "mock races". My favorite is either the 800m final of this years olympic trials or 2004 athens 400m final. Both races have great commentary, and crowds going crazy. When I run to the 800, I pretend to be Nick Symmonds (who also happens to be one of my fave runners), in that final 200 the crowd and commetator goes crazy as he blasts past everyone. Same goes for the 400m final as the 3 americans dominate the last 100. I run to these, feel like I am in the race, and everything just feels right and exciting.  Its something I love to do.

But anyways, on to my regular training. I am in week 2 of my training at "acceleration". And since week 1, my confidence is soaring. Confidence is one of the most important things to have in this sport, because without it, you wont run to your ability. Youll be scared to go that extra mile to succeed. My last treadmill workout last week consisted of basically 15 30 second runs on a slight incline at a fast speed, and I dominated that workout. I felt so good, and it boosted my confidence. Todays workout was much more difficult, starting with 4 60 second runs at slight incline, and quick pace, to a 1:30 (where this time I finished without a spotter) 2 more 60s then 4 35 second runs at a very fast pace, slight incline. These workouts really force me to keep my form, a long stride and good knee drive, so when I struggle near the end of a race, I can still keep my form and drive hard.

After the first few days of this place, I was scared to come in, knowing im going to kill myself to survive every workout, now my confidence is so high, i come in with the attitude of what do I get to take on today, with real excitement.

The olympics start friday...so I thought id throw in some predicitions for fun..

Starting with gold-silver-bronze

100 gay-powell-bolt

200- bolt-dix-spearmon

400-wariner-merritt-brown

800- symmonds(biggest upset ever)-kaki-reed

1500-lagat-choge-ramzi

Untitled Comment

7:37 PM, August 12, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

it would be cool if you posted those mp3's