Marathon running places a variety of psychological and physiological demands on the body. So how can you prepare for such demands? How can you ensure that despite the inevitable challenges you will still reach optimal performance and attain the goals that you have set out for yourself?
Whether you are training for a 10k or a 26 mile marathon, the distance is in large part, a mental game. The mental practice throughout your training regimen will give you that competitive edge that you are looking for and help you to cope with the stresses that come along with long distance running.
The feeling of uncertainty Mike spoke of during his Half Iron Distance Duathlon is quite common among athletes in a competitive environment. This feeling really has a lot to do with self-confidence, trust and focus. It is important to try to avoid focusing on things that you cannot control at the time of the race. By worrying about whether or not your body will survive the demands of the race you are putting negative energy and focus into what you don’t want. You do not want to lose energy stores so that you can feel anxious. Instead trust in your training, work on developing your confidence, and bring back your positive mindset by focusing on what you want to happen throughout the race.
Develop Confidence through Preparation
Build your plan long in advance. If you believe that you have done everything you can do to perform your best, you will have confidence in your ability to perform well. This includes; physical, technical, tactical, and mental parts of marathon running. If you expect to run a 4 hour marathon, you had better get out there and experience it first hand in order to fully grasp the psychological and physiological stress involved in a 4 hour run. Follow a meal plan that suits your individual profile and meets the energy demands of your sport. Be prepared for various challenges and scenarios that you might face in a race. Learn the course in detail, train in bad weather, experience a variety of races, and use visualization to help you imagine different scenarios and your positive reaction to them.
Gaining Confidence from Adversity
It's one thing for you as an athlete to be confident when you are performing well and things are going your way. It is an entirely different challenge for you to maintain your belief in yourself when you are faced with adversity. To more deeply ingrain confidence, expose yourself to as much adversity as possible and learn to respond positively. Adversity involves anything that takes you out of your comfort zone (ie. bad weather, poor competitive conditions such as an annoying official, a variety of running surfaces, inclines, and obstacles)
Maintaining Confidence through Self-Affirmations and Positive Self-Talk
Analyze videotapes of previous races or use visualization to review races and point out strengths and weaknesses. Figure out where you can improve and how you’re going to do it but do not focus solely on the weaknesses. Keeping track of your successes is an excellent way to increase self confidence. Use self-affirmations and positive self talk to keep self-confidence at an all time high. Self-affirmation is a process of directing self-talk to affirm your positive abilities and skills as an athlete. Repeated use of self-affirmations creates certainty in the subconscious mind making self confidence and self assurance a natural process. It is important to make affirmation lists in order to reinforce your belief in yourself. Here are some examples adapted from Shambrook (1996) for you to follow:
General Sport-related affirmations
I am confident in my ability
I have the skills needed to perform well
I feel mentally strong
Personal Sport Achievement Affirmations
In the Ottawa Duathlon, June 14th , 2008; I ran my best time of ….
I performed brilliantly in unfavourable weather conditions
I came back strong after a slow start in the half iron man even last month
Competition Specific Self-Affirmations
I will maintain a fighting spirit throughout this race
My preparation has been excellent
Stay energized during the last section of the race
The weather conditions will work in my favour
If a runner gets ahead early, stay calm and focused
Transform anxiety into positive energy and inspiration that I can use to stay strong
The competition specific self-affirmations can also be used as a form of positive self-talk throughout your race. One of the most important determinants of developing and maintaining confidence throughout the race is what you say to yourself. Key words related to emotions or technique can be extremely effective in staying positive and focused. For example if you find yourself losing energy and feeling worried that fatigue is setting in repeat a sequence of key words to make you feel more energized like, “Fast, strong, powerful ….fast, strong, powerful…”
Keep in mind that when using positive self talk you do not want to start your sentences with a negative connotation such as; “Don’t”, “Not”, or “No”, as the conscious and unconscious mind filters out negatives (Losier, 2006). Even though your intention is good your mind filters out the instruction thus communicating what you don’t want to your body. Start telling your body what you “Do” want. For example instead of saying “Don’t panic” say “Stay calm” and rather then saying “Don’t slow down” say “Keep up this pace”. With that being said you do not have to try to deny or ignore that there is some degree of concern in the mind -- this is too powerful to overcome in the short term. Rather, acknowledge that there is a real challenge in the situation but attempt to think about the challenge from a different angle. Always try to have a replacement thought ready which has been rehearsed previously. This will not be possible for all situations but the more mental training that is done prior to race time, the more likelihood there is that you will be equipped for an unexpected arrival of self-doubt and negative thinking. Practice “thought stopping”, this involves using a mental cue to lock out uninvited negative thoughts. Create an image of a big red traffic light as a reminder to stop the negative thinking and change it to a positive (Shambrook, 1996). Here are a few examples of devaluing your negatives and restructuring the sentence into a positive statement.
Changing Self-Statements
Change from Negative Self-Talk Change to Positive Self-Talk
“I’m worried about facing my main competitor again” “I am confident that I have trained hard enough to beat him this race”
“I’m worried that I didn’t eat enough” “I planned out my meals well in advance and stuck to my plan.”
“My legs might be too weak to run near the end of the race” “I ran this distance before and succeeded, I will do it again.”
Tips for Changing Self-Talk
Avoid using the word “Try”, I will try to…” as it give you permission to fail.
Avoid starting sentences with:
“I hope that…”
“I’m worried about…”
“I can’t”
“It is difficult for me…”
Instead start sentences with:
“I know that…”
“I’ll be okay if…”
“I can if/provided that I….”
“It is a challenge for me but I have confidence that I will…”
Distraction Control: How to conquer fatigue, boredom, and pain
Prepare for the “wall”
When you train for a marathon you are very aware of energy levels. Nonetheless, it is inevitable when running for 5 hours straight that you will hit that proverbial wall when you’ve just about exhausted your physical and mental energy. What separates the winners from the losers? It is all in your response to this event. Experience the fatigue factor in your training and practice a positive reaction to the event. Glycogen depletion is bound to happen when running for such long periods of time; thus it is important to not only experience the feeling of losing control but to train your body to cope (Mark Plaatjes cited in Ungerleider, 2008). Use your training and visualization to plan ahead and anticipate the outcome. A good plan is to fine tune your positive self talk while experiencing your fatigue mentally and physically throughout your training; what kind of negative self talk do you experience, how do you tend to react, what are the exact positive statements you say to yourself to get energized, what key words will you use? Racing is very strategic and a good marathon runner will conserve mental energy in the first half of the race in order to kick it in to high gear in the second half of the race. Pace yourself physically and mentally and you will find that you will have a sufficient amount of energy towards the end when you really need it.
If the pain is unbearable and you can’t seem talk yourself out of it, it may help to shift your focus. Shifting your focus can also be useful for beating boredom. Some runners will shift to an external focus; for example imagining the shower and nap they will get upon completion of the race. This can be quite affective; however, if you would like to stay more connected to your racing experience you may maintain more of an internal focus by using mantra, singing, listening to the rhythm of your feet hitting the pavement, visualizing the finish line. What is a mantra you ask? A mantra is the repetition of a specific sound that is significant to you, like the “m” sound. The repetition of this sound enables your mind to settle down and allows you to broaden your focus so that you can pay more attention to your surroundings and avoid going crazy over boredom and/or fatigue. Lastly, set small milestones so that you may feel a sense of accomplishment each time you reach a particular milestone. This strategy will prevent you from becoming overwhelmed by the total distance to the finish line and will help you to take the focus off of being bored.
I hope you will find these tips helpful. Remember, mental training is just as important as physical training. If you want to achieve your goals in running you have to put your mind to it!
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