Finishing high in mtt's: the difficulty of it

[flapgreen]

As I used to be mainly a cash game player, I've recently caught the tournament bug and have really enjoyed playing them lately. Basically, I'd like to discuss the thought process of some of the experienced veterans around here have when entering mtt's. Not just strategy but what your mindset is also, over the long haul and each individual tournament.

Last night, I played in the Stars $10+1 and finished 10/1700. That's the best I've finised in a mtt so far. I was the big cl with about 25 left to go but went card dead and eventually got all in with 1010 that lost to AQ.

In last night's tournament, I started fairly slow but the deck hit me upside the head during the middle stages and I built my stack up pretty well. I didn't deliver one bad beat I can remember but I also won almost all of the races I was in until the last one. I was playing good poker but was also catching some phenomenal cards too. I felt like I was going to win the thing at one point but just went card dead toward the end. I'd like to hear some others opinions on these types of circumstances. What percentage of big tournaments that you play do you finish high in? It seems that even if you play almost perfect poker you still would very rarely make it to a FT. The combination of enough great cards and winning numerous races to put you at the final table would appear to be very infrequent. I'm sure that's why most pro's make a living at cash games. There's just something to winning a big one and hitting that big payday though that's very intriguing. Thoughts? Feel free to add anything to this you feel is relevant.