T minus-two weeks

My 800m race is becoming a reality. The reality is, I have to run it and it has slowly but surely begun to encroach upon my dreams.

It is both surprising and unsurprising how much I dread running it. I sometimes convince myself that I have created my own monster through my flair for hyperbole and exaggeration. but let me tell you this:

I hate running the 800m even by myself. It is motherfucken hard. Waking up on these chill June mornings and heading down to the oval where I run sans traction sets of two laps.

I have learned new noises I can make while breathing and have fallen short of that elusive threshold of pushing oneself till you throw up. I've never been able to, I don't particularly want to, but in this particular race it would be nice to know that I can.

I find myself going quiet and pondering whence my race shall be fast first or fast last. Knowing ultimately that I will not know until I race, and fast first or fast last is irrelevant, I simply have to be fastest.

I have no idea how the actual race will go down, but equally I appear to have no idea how a particular training session will go down. I'm remarkably inconsistent. Today for example, my first 800 was terrible and I sat darkly for a long time staring at my dog before getting up and doing another quick 400 where I found my legs felt surprisingly light but still capable of propulsion.

The dog is probably my single most important piece of training equipment. If it wasn't for the pleasure of walking my dog that I have craftily combined with my training regime, I doubt I would even get out of bed when faced with the prospect of running 800m.

This is perhaps my keenest disadvantage against John, who conditional to his boasting has never run an 800m. He lives in the blissful ignorance of just how unpleasant an 800m can be. No matter how much trashtalking I do, he doesn't seem to take on board what a fucking nightmare the 800m is.

He will probably remain impervious right up to the day. This will probably buy him a few extra seconds at the start, where he takes off while I try to hold down my lunch/dinner/whatever.

I really need to find some way to kill my mind, so that my mind can destroy my body and win this race.

I need to puke.