Megan Jastrab: Focusing on the Now

This year has challenged me in more ways than one and left me contemplating what it will feel like when all my injuries are healed fully and I can return to racing with proper form. As an athlete, I feel like I am always working towards something, and there is always room for improvement. However, my perspective has had to be readjusted while dealing with setbacks from injuries. There are endless areas to be improved upon when you are starting back from an injury, and there is only so much you can do. As athletes, we push ourselves to the limit regarding training, racing, and life balance. We usually think the more we push ourselves, the more benefits we will see. Progressive overloading can be beneficial in many ways, but it is needed in moderation when returning from an injury. 

I am doing everything I can throughout the day and training to return to my best. While this is great, and I’m glad I have the motivation for this, I have had a lot of hard moments accepting that my body was not ready to take on the training load progression at points. No matter how motivated I was to keep pushing, the best thing for me was to stop and let my body rest. I am all for rest and recovery, and I understand how crucial it is, but when my body still needed rest after multiple easy days, it was harder to accept. 

Whether I am working towards a result or being able to move to the next exercise in rehab, I am focusing on what is to come and what I can achieve. I think this mindset leads back to wanting to be the best at what I do with my time and helping my future self. During my rehab this year, I think I began to get caught up in dreaming about what could have happened and what I want to happen moving forward. Both thoughts resulted in me looking everywhere but in the now. 

I realized that I needed to zoom out on my perspective on where I’m at. Even though I may not be at the level or place I want to be currently, I keep telling myself I’m exactly where I need to be, and I’m going to do my best at where I am at. The last part about doing the best for where I am has helped me when my mindset starts to drift toward the negative. The negative mindset has a wide range, but some examples would be talking myself down, comparing myself to before my injuries, where I think I should be in my recovery, power numbers I think I should be able to hit, how I should perform while racing, etc. While some of these things can motivate me to push harder in key sessions, I found that it would be more draining than productive most of the time. That’s why, with my perspective shift to focusing on the now, I can refrain (for the most part) from the negative thoughts and find motivation to do the best I can on the given day. If it is taking a rest day after another rest day because that is what my body needs, I accept it and keep focused on what my body needs. 

I hope sharing this blog might help those reading it realize that you are exactly where you need to be on your journey to your goals. It might take a different timeline than you originally anticipated, but staying focused on doing the best you can at where you are is the most you can ask of yourself.

Thanks for reading,

Megan