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Not As Good As Pork Cracklins

misadventures in cooking

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Visualize Success

I'd been training hard for my... 15th? 16th? I forget... marathon. I'm a big believer in the power of thought: What you think and what you say have a huge influence on how you perform. I have a big bag of mental tricks, and I pull them out when I need them. One is "visualization". That can mean driving the course, so that you can picture what's coming when. It can mean imagining the roar of the crowds. It can mean many things.

Somehow, for me, for this particular race, visualizing success came to mean picturing the Starry Night cake in Whimsical Bakehouse, topped with the same sparkly chocolate numbers that I hoped to see at the finish line. My goal was 3:40 and I'd have been very, very happy with those numbers. But the cake in my head showed 3:37. I visualized that cake often. Because of it, 3:37 became my secret, scared-to-say-it-aloud goal.

There's a race report here, and if you scroll down to the finish line picture, you'll see the time... 3:37:57. Ok. That's a little scary. No, more than a little scary. Whoa! That's just bizarre.

Still, the time on the clock includes the time it took to get to and cross the starting line. Official results --net running time-- show something altogether different, numbers that were beyond my wildest expectations:

9 Comments:

At 10/08/2008 1:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice cake!!!!

 
At 10/08/2008 2:19 PM, Blogger Jess said...

funny...part of my visualization for my event involves a cake too...no wonder we are friends!!!!

 
At 10/08/2008 2:59 PM, Blogger Mark said...

Yahoo! The baking ban is over! :) I love the new number, what you've done with it, and how tasty its associated cake looks :)

 
At 10/09/2008 1:01 AM, Blogger Heleen said...

Congratulations Amy! On your accomplushments, both time and cake-wise. Awesome cake!! (I don't see any air bubbles ;o))

 
At 10/11/2008 9:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Love the 3:35 Starry Night . . . must figure out what my visual motivator will be. : )

 
At 10/12/2008 9:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I LOVE the cake! I have that cookbook and it has such cool cakes. Congrats on your race!

 
At 10/12/2008 10:49 PM, Blogger Ashley said...

Congratulations, Auntie! The cake looks delicious! Is that chocolate icing (i'm pretty sure it is probably not called icing)?

 
At 10/19/2008 6:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm so proud of my Lizzie!
She makes good cakes too! Good breads too.....good everything. She is quite the accomplished chef!

 
At 10/20/2008 5:39 PM, Blogger LB said...

That was one of the best cakes I have ever eaten. If I didn't have to run immediately afterwards, you might have had to pry more of it out of my hands.

 

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