OK, the right title for this should have been that I was a lazy cunt and couldn’t break my half marathon record in September 2020. But because of the joke called political correctness, I prefer to leave it here. Fact: on 6th of September I took part at Wizz Air Budapest Half Marathon. My best time is not great, 1:38:15 reached in October 2019. Normally, I can do better than that. Physically it is not problematic. But mentally, I choose to reach a comfort that it told me it is fine like this, I mean the eventual 1:40: something, doesn’t really matter, finishing time.
Under 1:30 in long term! Now, 1:37 is fine!
Of course I found a main reason. One day before, I was at Balatonszolos for a nice 50K run through vineyards. Hot September day, no doubts about that and a challenging race. 5:15 or so it took me. No problems. I wasn’t trashed, but I felt a bit the effort. I mean… even though I run a lot, 50 kilometers in one go is not a massage for nobody. But initially, in my head I thought that if I can start at a decent pace next day’s half, I should go under 1:38. Of course, my ultimate dream is to go under 1:30, but now that is not possible. Still, 1:37 should have been great.
Never seek excuses!
First part of the race was according to the plan, I only should have pick up the pace in the second half, not much. But some two bad kilometers gave a voice in my head that told me: ‘it is OK, don’t push, you don’t need to!’ Of course, I didn’t need to, regardless the time so I followed the voice, using the excuse of the previous day. I started to stop in some hydration points even though I know for sure I can go without any problem 21 kilometers without doing that. I choose the easy way and lost some seconds. Without these, probably my time would have been below 1:40, maybe around 1:39.
The mind is your friend or your enemy
Not much of a difference, because my record still wasn’t very near, but if I took bit of a speed than we could have discussed different. Of course, I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t using the 50K as an excuse! No! I forbid myself to do so, because I knew that only my weakness stood in front of my desire. Not a tragedy, but an interesting morale: how your mind indeed can guide you! Everybody can imagine that for an effort that would have shortened my race time with 2:30 minutes, my body could not have been that damaged. More than it already was.
A lesson for life
Still, I have preferred the easy way and choose to give up. Here, it wasn’t important at all, because running through Budapest is a great experience itself, but this thing thought me a great lesson that I will forever use in life and also it strengten my belief that we should not seek excuses whatsoever. A good time to get this useful lesson. Next time, for sure, I’ll bit my time. Even though I need to run 100K the day before. Well, just joking a bit. I prefer to be more relaxed. But you see? I am thinking in advance for an easy way. And in the real life, there is no such thing!