Cookie Jar Run

My physiotherapist, Mark Green from The Body Mechanic, explains it perfectly: "Imagine your body is a cookie jar. Life is a constant balancing act of putting cookies in, and taking cookies out. You need your cookie jar to be ¾ full most of the time. If it is less than half full you’ll be feeling run down, picking up colds and flus, and lacking energy. If your cookie jar is empty, then you’re dead!"

I believe that the two weeks leading up to a race is the ideal time to fill up that cookie jar with a different type of cookie, the most important one - the right mindset. 

By that, I mean acknowledging all the hard work we've put in during your training, for weeks, months, or even years, just to be at the starting line. Even if the lead-up to the race wasn't perfect or we plan to adjust our training strategy in the future, we've done the best we could do at this point. Acknowledge all the greater obstacles we've already overcome in your life, greater than anything "a run" can ever throw at us. 
Ultimately, no matter how important a race may feel, in the grand scheme of things, for most of us, it's just a run. It has little to say about our worth.

And when one race day we are in doubt, we feel like we can't possibly push harder or can't take one more step, that's the time to take a deep breath and a big bite of that mindset cookie. 
We, YOU are awesome. 
We, YOU can do anything. 

And if this time we fail, that's ok too.