Breaking Through Mental Barriers

Common Challenges for Racing Fast

Next level racing requires addressing mental barriers.

Most readers have plenty of racing left in their seasons. This article contains ideas for mental skills training during high-stress situations.

Identifying Limiters

Reading through my article about Fast Ironman Racing, you may have noticed four areas where my limiters were in my head, rather than my body:

Swim — I started at a comfortable pace and watched the faster group swim away. While this strategy makes sense for many, I’m giving time away.

Swim & Bike — Even when they are saving me energy, I dislike other athletes setting my pace. Related, I experience internal noise when intensity gets up and someone else is driving pace. Have you ever felt a low level panic during an open water swim? I’ve been getting those at many of my races.

Bike — I made a tactical error when I attacked the group and decided to ride away, setting my own pace.

Overall — in many of my races this season, I failed to finish strong. While I may have finished optimally, I wasn’t able to deliver the strong run finishes that characterized my elite career.

Racing to win can be characterized by tactical moves that impair overall time, but improve overall position. I know I can do better and my capacity to suffer during the run is improved when I am finishing strong.

---

Burning a match (or two) at Challenge Roth. In hindsight, too early in the day to have that look on my face.

---

Positive Statements To Test & Address

Let’s rephrase these shortcomings into a positive statements we can address in our training and racing.

1. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

2. Get Comfortable With Others Setting Pace

3. Don’t Engage To The Point of Error

4. Finish Strong

That my list.

Before we continue, I want you to spend time answering four questions about your racing. Extend your thinking to include race specific and high-intensity training days. Race reports and your training log are valuable for this analysis. If you didn’t take great notes this year then start immediately.¹

1. Name a situation where coping with discomfort resulted in improved performance. What did you do well? How did that feel?

2. What were the races, and sessions, where you were exceptionally tough?

3. What fears surface when you are racing and during race week?

4. Shying Away From Discomfort has been linked to fear of blowing up. Is this fear grounded in reality? How can we address and build confidence?

Your challenges are likely to be different than mine. For example, I’ve worked with athletes who never gave themselves a chance to see what they could do. Their early pacing decisions were always so poor, their careers were filled with DNFs and underperformance. Their mental challenges involved backing off enough to see their true level. Most athletes with this profile do a lot of racing in training then race below their training performances.

---

Showing the strain during a breakthrough performance. My first time running under 2:50 in a marathon. I can remember the exhilaration of running down top tier athletes at the end of the race.

---

Discomfort vs Pain

Coming back to my article, discomfort need not be painful in a classical sense.

• Swim start, there is discomfort as effort builds but there is also the fear of blowing up and looking stupid.

• Bike groups setting the pace — the discomfort is not being in control, having to use mental energy to be the most legal rider and the mental cost of managing gaps, rather than pace.

• Marathon pacing — when it came time for my mental negotiation, I made a choice to slow down. This choice was not made because the current pace resulted in unbearable pain. The choice was made due to an expectation of future pain and a fear of future loss.

I highlighted a few things above. These can appear deeply personal when you experience them. Here’s the real secret… everybody feels them.

• Fear of blowing up.

• Fear of looking stupid.

• Not being in control.

• Mental energy, mental cost, mental fatigue.

• Expectation of pain.

• Fear of future loss.

When the above moments are in the driver’s seat, we’re unlikely to make good decisions.

Look carefully at your moments and you will find most of them result from the mind running scenarios about the future.

The cue we can use… relax, come back to the moment and execute.

---

Pain, Fear and Master Coaches

Towards the end of my elite career, I was fortunate to be coached by Mark Allen. Mark’s racing career was characterized by exceptional mental control, eventually. In his early days, he found his fears got in the way of breakthrough performance.

++

As my coach, Mark encouraged me to face my fears. Probably the most memorable situation was when I abandoned my bike pacing strategy to limit the lead of one of my competitors. That day, I completely detonated on the run. My race was in tatters, I was the #1 seed (wearing the #1 bib)… and… nothing.

Afterwards, it was no big deal. Life went on. This massive fear (in my head) turned out to be a nothing-burger when actually experienced.

+++

Another incident, with a different outcome. It was an Olympic Distance Race in the South Island of New Zealand. I was in good shape but lacked self-belief over short distances.

Before I left Christchurch, John Hellemans recommend a simple strategy… ride the bike like there there is no run. I did just that, got myself a gap and won the race, quite comfortably.

These stories highlight three truths about breakthrough performances:

1. We’re not going to win every time. We will have spectacular blow ups.

2. Approaching the edge of our capacity, we are going to experience intense emotions and extreme thoughts. There’s emotional, and pace, management required on race day.

3. Breakthroughs happen when we accept the moment and let the future take care of itself.

Intense emotions become easier to manage with practice. One of John’s techniques is to reframe race pain as race pace.

When the pace is such that I want to quit, I tell myself…

Good job, this is right where you need to be.

---

Using Low Priority Races

Once you’ve written down the areas you want to improve, tackle them one-at-a-time in training and racing. Low-priority races are the most specific situations to practice these limiters.

Pick one thing as your goal, and the let the future take care of itself.

• Swim — make your race about swimming at the back of a faster group than normal.

• Bike — make your race about smashing the bike

  • …or not smashing and not getting rattled by the choices of others.

  • …or not smashing and relax at a legal distance behind the inevitable groups.

• Run — hold back all day then place your best performance in the second half of the run.

• Pacing — for getting comfortable with pace being out of our control, nothing beats bike racing. It’s also a fabulous training stimulus for all types of athletes.

Each race providing an opportunity to build a specific skill for your race-day toolbox.

---

Strong At The End

I’ll leave you with a favorite quote from Justin Daeer.

Don’t be in a rush to get to the difficult bits.

You will find that building the capacity to be strong at the end dominates outcome.

Back to Endurance Essentials eBook

1. Not only do I have training log but I have the analysis articles that I share with you. You’ll notice I document key workouts and races. This is the fastest way to learn, and improve.