Getting ready for another race

Next weekend (Sunday) is the Longhorn 70.3 half ironman. Usual mix of excitement and nervousness that precedes a race... I guess that will never change. I feel pretty well recovered from the Redman triathlon 4 weeks ago - we'll see how true that is about 2 or 3 hours into the race, though.

I was just reading through some of my coaching materials, and it talked about performance goals vs. outcome goals. Performance is how you actually do in terms of your time, and outcome is your actual placing in the race. They made a good point that you have much more control over the former vs. the latter. So, it's healthier to focus more of your energy on your own performance; and then see where that leaves you in terms of the outcome. For example, if I broke 5 hours in this half IM, I would be thrilled. That may put me in the top 10 of my age group, it may not (there will likely be over 100 in my age group). That part I can't stress over. Even the performance goals can be affected by things outside your control - weather, inaccurate distances in the events, mechanical issues, etc. In the end, you just do what you trained for and hopefully can be happy that you gave it all you had :)