\u201cYou\u2019re not ready for this, what were you thinking?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMy gosh, look at the size of those athlete \u2013 I can\u2019t compete with them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n When my wife and I got married decades ago, we bought a cat \u2013 a Maine Coon Cat that we named Woody.\u00a0 He was about six-months old when my mom called one afternoon to extend an invitation for dinner at her house; cat welcome. \u00a0My mom\u2019s house had 16-foot vaulted ceilings in the living room and a mirror that went floor to ceiling about ten feet wide.\u00a0 We came in through the garage as normal and put Woody down.\u00a0 He thought he was pretty hot stuff as he walked around like a King checking out his new castle.<\/p>\n Until he got to that mirror.<\/p>\n You could almost see him thinking, \u201cThere\u2019s a cat in my house!\u00a0 No problem, I\u2019ll scare him away!\u201d\u00a0 He arched his back, started hissing, growling and finally charged the other cat.<\/p>\n Except the other cat had the same idea.\u00a0 Those two cats almost got nose to nose before they turned tail and ran.\u00a0 It was 20-minutes before Woody came out of whatever corner he\u2019d sought refuge in to slowly sneak around the couch to make sure he\u2019d scared the other cat away.\u00a0 Gaining confidence with every step, he reached the end of the coach, rounded the end table . . . and came face to face with the other cat that was doing exactly the same thing.\u00a0 We had a difficult time eating dinner through the laughter as Woody spent the next two hours trying to figure out how to scare the other cat out of his house.<\/p>\n The moral of the story is \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid of the cat.\u201d\u00a0 That cat likely sees you the same way you see it.<\/p>\n On race day, the only person you are truly racing is the person you looked at in the mirror that morning.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Scott that\u2019s not true, I\u2019m in a race to win my age-group.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s great!\u00a0 And I hope you do.\u00a0 The problem is, when you race somebody else\u2019s plan, the results rarely work out in your favor.<\/p>\n On race day, it\u2019s about YOUR fitness, YOUR plan, and how YOU execute YOUR plan.\u00a0 It\u2019s about you, not the other person.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t be afraid of the cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s race day \u2013 and you’ve got nerves.\u00a0 Really serious nerves.\u00a0 Suddenly those nerves force you to have doubt: \u201cWhat did you do?\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not ready for this, what were you thinking?\u201d \u201cMy gosh, look at the size of those athlete \u2013 I can\u2019t compete with them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1],"tags":[47,41,48],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental","category-ramblings","tag-mental","tag-race-day","tag-race-prep"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"scared](\"http:\/\/bscmultisport.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/iStock-652595182-300x300.jpg\")