How can I set myself up for a strong season mentally?

DOMINIC, OHIO

~The NAU team training at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff, Arizona

Well, I can confess that this question came from the famous Dominic Schlueter, founder of the excellent podcast, The Running Effect. I had the privilege of answering this question in his company, and in-depth, on this recent podcast episode. However, I am sometimes more articulate in writing than in speech, so I have decided to include my response here also.

How can I set myself up for a strong season mentally?

My response to this question is not a finite answer. Instead, it is two more questions which can take thoughtfulness and time to answer and one skill that requires courage to develop. But, the thoughtfulness, time and the courage spent addressing all three are worth it.

1. Consider, how do you want to relate to the race this season?

What I mean when I ask you about your relationship with the race is very similar to what I would mean if I were asking you about your relationship with a person. For example, I’m guessing that all of you know what it is like to look forward to spending time with a particular person, and how your best self emerges in their company. We all also know what it is like to dread spending time with a particular person and to struggle to access our best selves in their presence.

By relationship with the race I am referring to how you feel toward racing and who you become in that environment.

Here are 2 examples of different relationships with the race:

Example 1 How I perform really matters to my future. I feel like every workout or race proves or disproves whether my goals will come true. I feel like I have to keep this level of intensity and focus on my outcome goals or they will slip out of my hands. I feel like these early races hold the power to determine if all of my training was worth it and what is possible for me this season.

Example 2: In general, the racing space is an opportunity to discover and shape who I am. I intend to be in this sport for a long time! This race is one of many in my career and no one race can ever determine my future. I am going to use this race to re-experience what racing is like and to notice what arises in me around and inside the race. I am curious to see where my fitness is at right now. I am excited to be with my team and compete with my friends.

Why relationship with the race matters

To understand why relationship with the race matters to both your experience and your performance just notice, as you read those 2 examples, how do you feel in your body? When I read the first example, I feel tension, electricity, the desire to force, shortness of breath, and some dread about entering that environment. I also have a sense that I might learn something that I can’t handle.

When I consider the second example I automatically take a deep breath and let some tension out; this happens on its own. I feel eager and grateful to work on skills in a sport that matters to me. My attention more readily opens to the fun and the people and the privilege of racing – wow, I get to do this! For this season and many seasons!

Due to their impact on the body, relationships with the race more similar to the second example typically serve performance.

To clarify your own preferred relationship with the race you can ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. Who do I want to be in the racing environment (list 3 qualities inside yourself that you want to draw on)?
2. How do I want to see (what is your perspective on the race or your purpose for being there?)?
3. What am I going to do (design a loose plan based upon how the person you want to be would execute the race.)?

Review these questions regularly and try to allow the energy that the answers bring to sink into you before workouts and races.

2. Honestly consider, what obstacles normally arise to your preferred relationship with the race? (ie: fear about how your body feels, fixation on outcome, comparison, need for linear progress). Be thorough, write them all down and look at them.

This is hard. Most of us prefer to imagine that things will just go well and simply hope that obstacles don’t arise. But, the reason that running is meaningful and that any success is valuable is because overcoming obstacles is part of the challenge. It serves us to anticipate the ones that we typically encounter and even welcome them.

Write down the obstacles to relating well to the race that normally show up for you. For example, when someone passes you do you feel like giving up? Do you focus on splits and forget to compete? Do you eveluate your race based on your time as opposed to factors that you can control?

Whatever obstacles are most common for you, expect them to show up. Create a plan of execution that instructs you as to what to do when you meet them. (If you want some tools to overcome obstacles this course and this one offer lots.)

Interestingly, when we practice being present with and accepting of mental and emotional obstacles and commit to acting well anyway, we are practicing the same skill can help us cope better with exertion pain.

3. Commit to relating to the race (being who you want to be, seeing how you want to see and doing what you want to do) regardless of what obstacles show up. You can!

I recently attended a (meditation) retreat which involved musicians playing live music from about 9pm – 2am three nights in a row. Late, on the last night, I noticed one of the musicians, who had yet to rest, offer his guitar to his colleague, asking him to play. I felt like I could sense this musician’s fatigue. He had been playing for three nights and he just needed a pause. But, his colleague waved his hand, no. He didn’t want to play.

The first musician paused for just a moment, then he took a breath and began a haunting hymn of touching sincerity and gentleness. I had the sense that he had gathered up everything left in him and was projecting that through his own inner obstacles into his guitar.

To me, this is the opportunity that we are presented with in the meaningful areas of our lives like running: to give our best, bravest, most personal energies within ourselves no matter what. Sometimes conditions are clear and easy – we are effortlessly relating to the race the way that we want to. Sometimes we are thick in physical and emotional weather.

I think that the most moving, inspiring, liberating and self-respect earning moments of our lives are the ones where you give your best through weather. Especially when you give it when the outcome you are seeking is long lost.

In these moments you are like the sun cast through storm clouds. You are the kind of view that is so beautiful that you pause what you are doing to look toward it.

That’s you in a race walking to the line afraid. That’s you in the race committing doggedly despite your pain and a terrible attitude. That’s you willing to find out where you at, even though there’s a part of you that believes that your running means everything and is terrified to know.

Summary

Clarify your preferred relationship to the race. Who do you want to be? How do you want to see? What are you going to do no matter how you feel?

Explore and highlight your obstacles – Accept, expect and plan for them.

Consciously commit to giving your best no matter what. Do that over and over again.