The Mental Game

After I wrote my last race report, I noticed that most of my struggles this year have been related to my weak "Mental". What I call "My Mental" is the series of thoughts, feelings and sensations on my mind at any given moment. This year has been really tough mentally, and not just from an athletic point of view. It started off with my crazy stomach infection in Mexico, continued on with the high anxiety I felt following this infection, then with the insane stress levels I've experienced at work. This led me to a mini burnout in March. I then took 7 weeks off to take care of my mind and body and get back to a balanced life. All was good, until I went back to work and had to start balancing my personal life with my professional life. Again, I didn't do too bad with that until June rolled around and the stress at work became worse again, at the same time we started getting hot and humid weather.

I suffered from a heat exhaustion episode in early July, because I didn't pay attention to the amount of fluids I was taking in while biking and swimming. I felt pretty sick from the heat and I beat myself up for not paying attention to how my body was feeling until it was too late. Following this, I became hyper-aware of my body and everything went down the drain. It's either too hot, too sunny, too humid, too windy to go for a run. I don't run unless the conditions are perfect, because I don't know how to differienciate between feeling hot and suffering from heat exhaustion. I have terrible anxiety running in the sun and I often feel like I'm going to pass out when I do. Of course, I don't pass out, but I'm scared of passing out so I avoid running. This was all made worse a few weeks ago when I went running first thing in the morning and came back home with a bad migraine that kept me in bed all day.

All this to say that I have been through difficult times this year and I don't know how to take control of My Mental again. I can't ignore it completely when it tells me to be careful or take it easy, but I can't keep on listening to everything it says either. I'm feeling a bit lost in this mess and I'm not sure how to approach it. Do I need a break? Or do I need to just push through the discomfort?