What are you good at?

Whenever I read an interview or survey with questions like "what are you proudest of about yourself?" or "what is your best personality trait?" I always think about what my answers would be. It's tough to come up with anything, because I don't tend to think of myself in those terms. So when a friend of mine recently told me "you're so fast" (yes that was you MD!), I didn't really think about it at first. Today on my long run, those words came back to me. It's funny that she said that, because I've actually never been fast. I did run a pretty surprising 10K last month at the end of my first Oly tri that I was really pleased with- don't get me wrong, I wasn't breaking any records, but it was a lot faster than I thought I'd be able to go at that point. But still- fast? me? That just sounds silly.

In school, we won a lot because we had a great team. We had two girls who were very good, then a few who were OK-to-decently-good (I was one of these) and then several more who contributed to the team in one way or another. Our team was very good because we didn't have just one or two superstars, we had a consistent level of pretty good talent among a lot of people. I loved being part of that: achieving more together than any of us could have achieved alone.

So, I was thinking about all this, and wondering if I'm not fast, then what am I? What do I do well? I decided that my best athletic strength is the ability to outrun my abilities. Meaning that when I need to, I can push through a lot of discomfort and doubt and pain and get more out of my body than I really had in there. My coach used to tell me I was a 'big-meet runner' because I'd always have my best races when it really counted.

I remember running my last leg of Hood to Coast in August, when I was still on my comeback from shin splints. I hadn't run anywhere near 7.28 continuous miles yet in my training, but that was how long my last leg was, so I crossed my fingers and off I went. I remember looking at my watch after about 2 miles and not really believing I could keep up my 8:45ish pace for 5 more miles (I'd been running around 11:00 pace in training!). But I thought, hey there's only one way to find out... and just kept going. I finished with an average pace of just under 9:00 which I was totally pleased (and surprised) with.

On my long runs lately, I've felt great, but I haven't felt like I could run much faster over that distance than I already am. But if history is any indication, I guess I won't really know until race day. I'm excited to find out.