Visualizing is going to take some practice. As a perpetual optimist I didn’t really think it would be very difficult but I found had to make a very conscious effort to stay positive. Automatically thoughts would suddenly pop into my head like ‘What does it mean if I can’t do this as fast as I could last summer?’. But I made an effort each time to immediately imagine myself performing well instead.

It paid off big time. I beat last summer’s time by more than 30 seconds! It left me wondering why I have felt so stagnant the past few months. But it finally dawned on me. Ever been on a boat when you can’t see outside? You and the people around you do not appear to be moving. On a daily basis I measure myself against some really amazing female athletes. A few of us rarely have times that are separated by more than a minute and often just by a few seconds – even after 25 minutes. It is more than likely that we have all been improving at the same rate.

So how do we figure out how much we have really improved overall? Well, during the next six weeks we are going to have the opportunity to look outside the boat… [more on that tomorrow].

Day: 10
Weight: 140
Fran last summer: 4:42
Fran yesterday: 4:10