From Gun to Tape: Mental Focus on Race Day
What you must do to meet or exceed your race goals
It's quite simple, really. You must move with
- proper technique, and
- appropriate level of effort
at every moment, from gun to tape.
Photo: eric.surfdude | License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
I said "simple." I didn't say "easy!"
The heart of training is not to prepare your cardiovascular system to race.
It's to prepare your nervous system to enable you to assess and correct your technique and effort over the entire duration of the race.
When Races Go Bad
When races go bad, it's almost always because of insufficient "mental endurance."
Most experienced athletes know how to bring themselves to a state of decent aerobic fitness come race day. (You know: the volume thing. You guys do that so well.)
Swimming, cycling, running are tiring. Concentrating for hours at a time? Deeply draining, to the untrained.
So train your mind. It may be your #1 limiter.
We'll go into more detail later.
