One week till regionals. I think I may go crazy now.
Have you ever noticed that all of the professional athletes have godly abs? I mean, sure mine are strong, and pretty defined, but are they something that you would see in the movie 300? No. Defiantly not. It it that the professional athlete genes happen to come with a free side of ab muscles? Or do they do hours and hours of ab workouts a day? Is there a secret 6-pack formula that I am not aware of? Are other-worldly abs the secret to running success?
Would abs like Ryan Hall's make me run like him?
Clearly the answer is no. Amazing abs don't make up for not training. You can't lower your P.R. by doing 500 sit-ups a day. ( I...don't...think) But as runners, abs are something that we're constantly working on, obsessing about, and let's be honest...staring at. If a pro runner didn't have awesome abs who amongst us wouldn't look at their belly and question how they ran so fast considering the shape of their abs?
There is nothing more I can do for regionals except taper. There's no way that running a ton of miles this week, or doing a really intense speed workout now is going to drop my 6k time that next minute. In fact, going crazy this week (taper week) would do far more harm than good. This means that there's really nothing else that I can go crazy with except of course, ab workouts.
Why do we obsess over these crazy things? All runners do it. Is 100 extra sit-ups a day going to help you in a race? Is running circles around your driveway so that you ran a "legit" 60 minutes instead of 59:25 going to push you over that barrier of your P.R.? How much does having the right shoes/socks/hairstyle really matter? Does sleeping with the regionals course map help you remember the course the next day? I admit that there are indeed all things that I have done in hopes that the extra 1% will push me over the edge. They're all things that I'm contemplating now in preparation for regions. Meaningless? potentially yes. But as runners we're all creatures of habit, of routine, of the same flavor of GU gel during every P.R. and the same pair of lucky socks since freshman year of high school (yes. I do)
At the end of the day it's your training, your legs, your heart, that will carry you to the finish line. But if 500 sit-ups a day help you step up to the starting line as confident as Ryan Hall himself, then by all means.
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