Track records aren't recorded in meters alone.

I'm not going to lie: I've been to therapy.*

*(Small, virtually imperceptible pause as jaws drop nationwide, because everyone thought I was quite possibly the most mentally stable individual on the planet. HAR.)

Granted, it's been a loooong time, and I never went very regularly, and most of it was couples therapy. (On two separate occasions, two separate counselors asked me bewilderedly {yeah, that's a word - or at least it is now}, how couples therapy could be working when I was the only member of the couple attending. Needless to say, both partnerships ended.) And, while I haven't had enough counseling to swear/prove/claim that I'm a bonafide nutcase, I've had more than your average Jill. Enough to know the reasons you go to therapy. So, some time back, training replaced a large chunk of my therapy, because serious, longer-distance training makes you think the same kind of thoughts that therapy is supposed to make you think.

Let me 'splain, Lucy.

When you're lying in bed at 12am, unable to sleep because you keep thinking thoughts (OH MY GOD, stop the presses, she's THINKING THOUGHTS AGAIN), all sorts of goofy things start to happen in your brain. If you're me, you start wondering why (and how) the hell your body couldn't (or wouldn't) cooperate earlier in the season so that you could be seeing monumental results as opposed to incremental results somewhere in the 2 months before your first 70.3 instead of somewhere in the MONTH before. Then you actually start to think - now bear with me here, because this is where I begin to sound really crazy - you start to wonder - no, you actually start to believe - that maybe - just maybe - you personally, semi-consciously, mentally, manifested your fears as illnesses to give yourself a one-way ticket to The Out. The Out is bad.

But, if you have a TICKET to The Out, then people can say things like That Meggan Ann, she really is a brave little thing, isn't she? Shame about her medical conditions. She could be such a great amateur athlete if it wasn't for her physical limiters. Poor thing. How noble of her to carry on, to try to find a way to beat down her dreams in spite of the odds (come on, let's face it, I'm not chasing my dreams down, I'm murdering them brutally). Because otherwise, people would be thinking: hey, kid, suck it up. If you don't do the work, you don't deserve the glory. You're a fat little lazy bookworm anyway - go back to doing what you're used to doing. No one actually buys that shit about how you used to be athletic. Bitch, please!

Well, the truth of what people think is somewhere in the middle, but that's not the point. The point is that there are demons in your brain, no matter who you are, and you go to therapy to (attempt to) exorcise those m'f'ers.

So, as I'm lying in bed last night, and these little assholes are crawling around in my head (by assholes, I mean the Negative Thoughts, of course), someone's voice jumps in there with them. And it's the second time in the past few weeks this has happened. (Hey, I warned you that this is where I begin to sound nutty.)

It's my very first therapist.

And the voice says, "Just look at your track record."

'Scuse me? I ain't no stinkin' convict. Whaaaa????

"You've been here before."

Since when have I ever trained for a 70.3? Lived in Heathrow? Owned my own place? Been divorced? Been able to actually go in later so I don't rack up overtime?

"But you've experienced traumatic and challenging times before, yes?"

Well . . .

"Well?"

Go****n, it - he's right. Again. Now we're having a full-on conversation in my cabeza.

"And what happened?"

"What do you mean, what happened?"

"Did you get through them?"

"Well, obviously not, or I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you."

"I'd like you to think about what you just said."

Why the f(%^* does this bastard insist on continually making me think?!!?!? Doesn't he know HE'S the one getting paid for this? HE should be the one thinking!!

Wait. He has a point.

"If I hadn't made it through, I wouldn't be mentally and emotionally aware enough to seek professional assistance with my current set of concerns. I'd be in a nuthouse. Or sick. Or, like, dead."

"Well, maybe that's a bit extreme, but I think you get the point. So, whenever you start to feel this way, you need to remind yourself of your track record."

"That's good, right?"

"Of course. It means that you've made it through difficulties before. In fact, if you look back carefully, you'll see that you've never NOT made it through. So, the greatest chance is that you'll make it through again - not that you WON'T make it."

So, Grasshoppa, as we see here, track records aren't recorded only in meters, or in time spent "in the clink." (Or "with the shrink." HAR. Who, by the way, frequently told me that I was one of his most stable patients because I was self-aware enough to identify, reason through and solve all of my own problems.) Now, instead of wondering what I could be accomplishing if I didn't have all my current issues, I'm actually starting to wonder if I was given the issues by A Higher Power to give me a reason to fight.

Not that I'd ever really need one. But I'll take a Ticket to the Match of the Year over a Ticket to The Out any day.