Thinking positively right now.

Isn’t there power in positive thinking?  I found this on the IMTX thread on BT, and it was modified from freeswimmingfish on the IMAZ thread.  This is what I have to believe for the next 10 days….

Right now you’ve all entered the taper. Perhaps you’ve been at this a few months,
perhaps you’ve been at this a few years. For some of you this is your first IM,
for others, a long-overdue welcome back to a race that few can match. Finishing an Ironman is never an accident. It’s the result of dedication,
focus, hard work, and belief that all the long runs in March, long rides in
April, and long swims every damn weekend will be worth it. It comes from
getting on the bike, day in, day out. It comes from long, solo runs. From that
first long run where you wondered, “How will I ever be ready?” to the
last long run where you smiled to yourself with one mile to go…knowing that
you’d found the answer.

You’ve been following your schedule to the letter. You’ve been piling on the
mileage, piling up the laundry, and getting a set of tan lines that will take
until next year to erase. Long rides were followed by long runs, which both
were preceded by long swims, all of which were followed by recovery naps that
were longer than you slept for any given night during college.

You ran in the dark.

You rode in the rain.

You ran in the heat.

You ran in the cold.

You went out when others stayed home.

You rode the trainer when others pulled the covers over their heads.

You have survived the Darwinian progression that is an Ironman summer, and now
the hardest days are behind you. Like a climber in the Tour de France coming
over the summit of the penultimate climb on an alpine stage, you’ve already
covered so much ground…there’s just one more climb to go. You shift up, you
take a drink, you zip up the jersey; the descent lies before you…and it will
be a fast one.

Time that used to be filled with never-ending work will now be filling with
silent muscles, taking their final, well-earned rest. While this taper is
something your body desperately needs, your mind cast off to the background for
so very long, will start to speak to you.

It won’t be pretty.

It will bring up thoughts of doubt, pain, hunger, thirst, failure, and loss. It
will give you reasons why you aren’t ready. It will try and make one last stand
to stop you, because your brain doesn’t know what the body already does. Your
body knows the truth:

You are ready.

Your brain won’t believe it. It will use the taper to convince you that this is
foolish – that there is too much that can go wrong.

You are ready.

It is worth it. Now that you’re at the taper, you know it will be worth it. The
workload becomes less. The body winds up and prepares, and you just need to
quiet your worried mind. Not easy, but you can do it.

You are ready.