Being prepared definitely helps out, and being one move ahead is amazing. Today, I went to Walmart and bought myself a good bike lock, to insure that my bicycle would not get stolen on one of my stops. Being prepared for an incident like that prevents it from happening. Tomorrow, I'm planning on cycling up to school to go to work. That means that tonight, I need to make sure to go to sleep early and get enough rest so that I would be ready to ride tomorrow. I'm not altogether excited about it, but at the same time, it's also going to be a productive way of using my time. Instead of driving a car an hour round trip and going to the gym and cycle for an hour, I'm able to cycle for a little over 2.5 hours, which uses my travel time as gym time, getting more exercise as a result, and enforced the start of my day to involve exercise. Because of that, I do not need to go to the gym as much, and my cardio as well as my muscles would be enhanced due to the prolonged exercise that I might possibly do.
Being one move ahead makes it so that you know what to do, should anything happen. Being prepared means that your choice has already been made, and all you have to do would be to follow your decision. In chess, it's important to not think about the current situation, but to think a couple moves ahead. Basically, the person who can stay one move ahead of the other person will win. It doesn't matter if you can think 100 moves ahead if the other person can think 101 moves ahead (assuming you knew every single possible move). Being one move ahead helps you in the long run.
In a race, being one move ahead is knowing what the course is going to be like and train accordingly. Knowing that my next race will involve a lot of hills, I knew that I needed to strengthen my legs to be accustomed to the large amounts of climbing I would have to do that day. I'm excited about this upcoming 50 miler because it's going to be a step for me... a step to applying for the Western States 100 mile race. If I apply and get it, then I'll have to prepare to race my hardest on that, because only 10% of the runners who apply is able to make it, and if you want to have a 100% chance of returning to do it, you need to be one of the top ten people to complete the race. Every year, I would be able to apply for the Western States, and every year, my chances of getting in will go up because the way they let people in is through the lottery, where they draw a certain amount of names to see who gets it. If you don't get it that year, the following year, if you apply again, you'll have two names, doubling the chances of success. I'm hoping that I would be one of the lucky few that would be chosen to run on my first go-around, but since I don't know if that's going to happen for sure, I'm going to be training like crazy for a race in February.
Being one move ahead helps you out a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment