Mental toughness – Giving yourself an advantage

Last Friday, June 27, I had arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder to remove bone spurs and repair a frayed rotator cuff.  The following morning, I was up running errands. Here, on the fourth day,  Tuesday, I met my trainer at the gym to work out for an hour, then I walked on the treadmills for an hour.  I was tired, to be sure, and all I did was walk, not run, but I am not a quitter!  I did it!

I see this all as a huge advantage.  See, one thing I read about marathons is that you really need to develop “mental toughness”.  And one way to develop mental toughness is to give yourself a secret advantage.

I’m getting LOTS of advantages, first from having a slight knee injury, and then from having this shoulder surgery.

1.  The knee injury made us focus on my body mechanics.  Body mechanics showed that I’m “knock-kneed” and run with my knees out of whack from my ankles.  So, rather than say, “oh, guess I can’t do this”,  I asked my trainer/chiro to really focus on my gait and my knee position as we train.
2.  He gives me what I call “advantage” exercises, like, special exercises that strengthen the muscles that stabilize the knee.
3.  Because of the knee injury, we shifted to more upper body work, so I went into shoulder surgery very strong and bounced back very quickly.
4.  Blood work for the surgery showed that I was slightly anemic (due to being vegetarian, a premenopausal woman, you name it).  My VERY cool doctor, knowing that I’m doing this marathon, gave me iron supplements.  He said I will notice a marked improvement when I start running again because I’ll have enough iron to carry the oxygen.
5.  It’s been good for me to learn about injuries and how to protect yourself, and how to rapidly recover from them. 

It’s about working within your limitations to exceed your expectations.

It was good for me to re-confirm that I am “driven”, I’m not a quitter.  That I put in two hours of exercise today, even if it was lighter than what I normally do, is amazing considering that I had surgery just a few days ago.  If I get into tough spots in training or the marathon, I’m going to remember that I was up and exercising within 24 hours of my surgery!