Developing Mental Toughness in Running and Triathlon

Think about your last great race.  The race where you pushed yourself and transcended pain and your abilities. The race where you crossed the finish line and were amazed at your accomplishment. What was different between that race and your other races? Likely, it was mental strength.

Mental toughness. Mental strength. You hear athletes talk about it all the time. Kara Goucher, one of the best female runners of all time, has publicly shared her battle with mental toughness. When it comes to racing, our mind can be our biggest friend or our worst enemy.

But, how can we develop mental toughness to help us with racing? With physical training, it's quite easy to improve. If you want to get faster and develop more endurance you simply train for it. Tempo runs, intervals, drills, long endurance workouts...with consistent training you will get stronger over time.  But how do you even start to train your mind? How do you increase your mental strength?

I'm certainly not a psychologist, and am definitely not the best example of mental strength, but I'm going to share some of the tips and tricks I've learned through my years of training and racing.

Strategies to Develop Mental Strength

1. During physical training, train your mind.

     During workouts, tune into what's going on in your head. If you have a particularly hard workout (say, running speedwork) use this opportunity to push your mind.  Think you can't go any faster? Shove all those thoughts aside and show your body that it's wrong. If your interval time is up, push it for a few more seconds.
     Is the weather deplorable outside? Head out for a training session anyway. Occasional training sessions in bad weather can help increase your confidence in your abilities.

2. Seek out the company of others

     Training with other athletes can be huge mental boost.  You can both struggle together and help each other. Some of my best training sessions came when I said "I can't" but my training partners said "yes you can" and pushed me beyond my preconceived capabilities.  If you train with someone who is right around your same ability, you can help push each other on rough days.

3. Measure your success

    Throughout your training, it's important to keep a log.  With a log you can document your improvement throughout your season. For example, I keep track of my running speedwork splits, my bike FTP, and my 100m swim times. Whenever I feel lousy about my training or racing, I look back on my log to see my improvement over the season.

4. Create a mental strategy for races

   Sure, we make physical strategies for races, but how many of you make mental strategies? In long races and triathlons, there are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong. It's how you mentally handle setbacks that determine your success in the race.  Try to anticipate things that could go wrong before a race and have strategies for handling them

5. Break larger races up into smaller segments

    If you try to mentally tackle a larger race all at once, it can be overwhelming.  Instead, break the race up into segments and create mental goals for each. For example, break a marathon up into 10k segments. In triathlon, break it up by discipline. Have a crummy swim time? Regroup, refocus, put the swim in the past, and set your mind on your bike.

6. Trust in your training

    If things go badly in a race, think back to your training. Are you suffering on the run? Think about how you successfully completed tempo runs at the same level of pain. Think about all the training you put in. The sweat, the sacrifice. You ARE physically prepared for the race. Don't let your mind tell you otherwise.

7. Have a mantra

   Before your race, come up with a mantra. Your mantra is your "go-to" word or phrase to help refocus your thoughts during your race.  A few years ago when I qualified for Boston, my phrase was "DDYA" (Don't deny your awesomeness). Last year during my first Ironman attempt it was "There will be a day when you can no longer do this...today is NOT that day". Currently, my mantra is "No sissy moments".  When you feel like you start to lose it mentally in a race, say your mantra and it can help you refocus your thoughts on the goal.

If you adopt some of these mental strategies, you can help increase mental toughness and decrease mental breakdowns in racing. Sure, we can't always have perfect races, but if we all work on developing mental strength we can make sure we have less of the bad races. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some mental conditioning to get to...