I Have Confidence in Confidence Alone

A while ago, the former world number one tennis player Victoria Azarenka basically said in an interview that she doesn’t believe in confidence.

Reading that I thought, “How can you not believe in confidence?!?!”

While I understand her point regarding mechanics, it struck me as one of those smug statements made by someone who is so comfortably confident on a subconscious level that it doesn’t even occur to her that there’s an alternative.

That being said, I am running a race in a few days and am the exact opposite of comfortably confident.  I’m not even uncomfortably, remotely or infinitesimally confident.  In fact, I’m so witheringly, knowingly and completely unconfident that I’m forced to rely solely on mechanics to get me through, the mechanism being my legs stepping one in front of the other until the glorious moment when I can stop.

The race I’m doing is a distance relay, and my three legs total fifteen miles.  I know I sound like a whiner because it’s really not that much, but I might be called upon to pick up a fourth.  I had participated in the same type of race at a different location last fall.  The biggest unknown then was how sleep deprivation and running at all hours, day or night, would affect me.  Last summer, I trained diligently.  I consistently increased mileage every week, overran my longest leg, went on multiple night runs, ran twice in one day a few times, and once thrice in thirty hours.  I stopped short of forced sleep deprivation in my training, but I practiced running on unfamiliar streets in the dark.  I had trained like the Dickens last time but it all that paid off because I was extremely happy with the results.

Cut to this time around, and I kind of coasted.  Now having a good idea what to expect, I simply didn’t train as hard and hence I feel unprepared, unready, and yes, unconfident.  This is my own fault, but it goes to show how confidence can carry you through and lack of it can cause anxiety or worse. 

Hopefully I’ll be alright.  I’m trying not to push myself too hard.  Maybe if I diminish my expectations I will be pleasantly surprised, which seems to be my mantra in all things even outside of running.  Who knows, maybe this race will even build my confidence for the next one, despite what certain a Belarusian professional athlete thinks about such a ridiculous notion.  Although this is also a woman who also believes she looks like Blake Lively.  So it would appear that her idea that confidence is overrated has catapulted her self-belief into the stratosphere of delusion.