Winning!

I am super overly competitive.  I bet you couldn't guess that in the fact that my whole blogging site is about me vs. my bulge, could you?  I grew up in a house full of brainy atheletes (yes they do exist) and everything was always a competition.  I won a race once in junior high and the first thing I did was run over to my dad and tell him that I belonged in the family.  I also ended up in the same Spanish class with my brother once and we always tried to beat the other one on anything that was graded. 

I never realized how bad I had gotten until a friend of mine told me about 10 years ago.  She was my gym buddy at the time and we ran next to each other on the treadmill a lot.  She told me that it would crack her up because any time she increased her speed, I would increase mine so I was going a little faster than she was.  I didn’t even do that consciously – I’m that competitive deep down that I did it without even thinking.  And if I couldn't run faster than you, I would run longer.  If I couldn't do that, I would lift heavier.  You see the trend, don't you?  There was always something I was better at.

Of course, winning isn’t as easy as it used to be.  And the downfall to every super competitive person is that once your realize you can't win, you stop trying. It took me a long time to get over that and realize that I don’t have to win everything and that there’s a lot of accomplishment in just finishing.  The biggest area I had to humble myself athletically is when it comes to running.  I used to be a sprinter in high school and although I wouldn’t have said I was the fastest, I was at least competitive.  By that I mean that I would occasionally win.  As I have gotten older and gained weight (and now have bad knees to boot), I have gotten SLOW.  And I mean SLOW as in I bet my 60 year old mother can run faster than me (of course she did teach aerobics for 20+ years, so she has always been in great shape).  I used to run a 5K in around 28 minutes and now I’m lucky if I finish it in 40.  Some of that is from still being out of shape, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get back to being as fast as I used to be. 

I did 2 triathlons in the past year and to get ready for them, I trained with a fabulous group of women.  I had actually done 2 triathlons before that, but that was over 3 years ago and I was training with a different group.  I was still slower back then, but the group I trained with then wasn’t all that competitive or fast, so I could pretty much hang with all of them.  Not so with my new group.  I can hang with the faster people on the swim, I’m mediocre on the bike, and of course, I’m always in the back on the run.  It was EXTREMELY frustrating to me to accept this, but at some point I had to.  I should mention that I had knee surgery back in February, so I actually couldn’t run for the first triathlon and had just started running again when I did the second triathlon.  If anybody has ever done a triathlon, then they can probably sympathize with how awful it feels to pass people on the swim and the bike only to have them pass you again on the run.  And unfortunately, in my opinion, the key to getting a good time in a sprint triathlon is to be a good runner.  But as much as I like to win, I am also not a quitter and I am determined to become a better runner.  I may never win anything, but just being able to get down to a 10 minute mile would be a huge accomplishment for me – if I can get faster than that, even better. 

I haven’t totally given up on competition, but I’ve changed the way I think about it now.  Instead of trying to be the best in my group, which I know will probably never happen, I try to get faster than the person that is just barely beating me.  Though I’ve also learned that even if I never beat them, I’m still winning by getting out there.  After all, the biggest competition I have is against myself.  I just need to beat my own demons that are preventing me from losing weight and being fit.

Just as any new health kick goes, I’m out to a rocky start.  I was bad again today and dipped into more leftover Halloween candy.  I didn’t go totally overboard though, so I don’t feel all that horrible.  One packet of snack size M&M’s isn’t going to kill me, but it doesn’t help either.