race day mantras

things to think about on race day:

• positive thoughts, fresh legs
• hard core!
• no pain
• slow is smooth, smooth is fast
• turnover, turnover, turnover
• 1 count, 1 second
• this is my adventure
• all of life is suffering
• the state of the world is suffering
• samsara
  
• it is what it is
• i am zen, i am satori
  
• man, am i losing a lot of weight today...awesome!
• good and skinny, good and skinny, good and skinny
• fried chicken, extra salt
• pizza, extra pepperoni and cheese
• baked potato, extra butter and broccoli and cheese
• pancakes, with butter and (real) maple syrup
• pancakes, with honey and nutella
• pancakes, with hot fudge and ice cream
• ice cream, with anything
• nutella, with anything
• marisa miller, with anything
• adriana lima, with anything
• alessandra ambrosio, with anything
• victoria's secret, with anything
• audrey hepburn sure was nice
  
• advil, advil, advil, and when i'm done, more advil
• i am sexy
• everybody is wishing they were me
• it'll be over by tomorrow
• grandma and grandpa, i love you
• oh lord god, show me why i am here
  

and of course, for poetry, i've been on an e e cummings trip lately:

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed
with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds
the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;
moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:
one pierced moment whiter than the rest
-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.
--e e cummings, it is at moments after i have dreamed

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
--e e cummings, i carry your heart with me

i love you much(most beautiful darling)
more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky
-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess
(except my life)the true time of year-
and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each
nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love
--e e cummings, i love you much(most beautiful darling)

for variety, i'll add in:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kublai Khan