My brain is powerful so I should use it...

Tonight I was listening to this guy called Dave Gilpin talk about a whole bunch of stuff. It was so good. But one of the things which really grabbed me was a statement he made: "Attitude is 90% of life."

I love that. I LOVE it.

We've all heard it right? The whole, mind over matter thing..? How many stories have we heard from champions in life and in sport about the mental edge. I know a lady called Barbara Oldfield. She was, in her heyday, number 2 in the world in Squash. Squash is not a game I have a lot of affection for. It's bloody hard and I always used to get smashed by those hard black rubber balls. But I digress...

Barbara is an amazing woman. She told me once that she reckons she won 80% of her games in the dressing room before she even got on the court. She would simply psyche her opponents out.

She would unleash the formidable power of her mind and the majority of her opponents would surrender before they ever got onto the court.

Attitude is 90% of life.

I remember a time when I was afraid of running. I remember a time when I would look at Lake Monger and think I would never be able to run the entire 3.5km around it without stopping. It just seemed too big and too scary and I was too unfit. And I remember as if it were yesterday, the day I woke up and thought, I'm going to try and I actually think I can. It took me nearly half an hour to shuffle around the 3.5 kms - a distance that now takes me around 18 mins...barely a warm up.

Attitude is 90% of life.

My running coach, Budgie, is a wise man. When he wrote my first ever program he told me not to look beyond the week I was working to. Now that's just silly. I am the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first. Yes I do. Don't you judge me...

So of COURSE I looked ahead to weeks 10 and 11...I saw 90 minute runs. I saw 6k interval sessions. I broke into a sweat at the thought of it. Budgie told me that my perspective would change....and it did. Now, I think of anything under 40 minutes as a short run. Now, I look forward to my long 90 minute sessions. It's a chance to clear my head and blow away the cobwebs. Oh and I think I may have developed a serious addiction to the endorphins...

So attitude is 90% of life. Because I have done two half marathons, I KNOW I can do a third...and a fourth and a fifth. It's a no brainer. My perspective has shifted. What was Mount Everest is now just a warm up jog.

Cool, huh?

Chat soon,

GT