How Do you Stay Mentally Tough in a Race?

what pain?

take thyroid medication

Amphetamines is da shiiiit.

Talk to yourself. During the 1500m finals, El G started willing himself to win from 600m out by talking to himself. He said so in a documentary.

When you feel tired - tell yourself "come on, we can do this hang in there" or "don't quit now - let's go!"

Also - you can try speeding up a bit. Jack Daniels says to try speeding when you feel like you're slowing down due to mental fatigue.

the great k goucher repeats a mantra: 'fighter' presumably to remind her what she is doing out there and what she wants to accomplish. Mental trick to stay focused on the goal. Salazar says she is particularly good at facing the pain and not shirking - just running right into it

stay relaxed, focus on winning

Like someone said, train alone and do workouts by yourself.

It pushes your mental threshold when you are running around a track hard, by yourself and dig within instead of focusing on catching or staying with a teammate.

train harder than your competitors, then the race won't feel as bad

tranky fiat wrote:

train harder than your competitors, then the race won't feel as bad

______________________________

run in the nude. works everytime

The boring answer is the correct one. If you train very well, a great performance won't hurt much. You won't have to fight through or stay "tough".

If the goin' does get tough, my college coach, Harry Groves, used to say "you've gotta find a reason to hate the son of a bitch. Pretend he said something about your sister, or insulted your mother. Just make something up!"

what?

if you stay mentally tough everyday on training runs going a little harder when you feel like slacking and in workouts by pushing just a little extra when you feel like giving up, you'll be able to push through in a race and stay tough. Don't overtrain, but train your mind to push a little more when your body feels like slowing. Practice is the key

Another strategy is to not think of the entire race and just focus on the part you're doing. Let's say you're in a 5k on the track and you're hanging onto the leader through the first mile. Then you start to fatigue mentally. Much of hte time it's because you realize you have 2 miles left or even worse, 8 laps (another tip, think of it as 2 miles to go, not 8 laps, plays a bit of a trick on your mind and it seems not as far since you've run 10+ miles before but 8 laps sounds terrible) and you think of how much that's gonna hurt.

Instead, just focus on the next 200, 400. Think of nothing else but hanging with the leader for this next part. Then keep doing this. Don't think of anything else but getting through that next 200/400 and hanging on to the leader. Eventually, the last lap will come up and then you just focus on beating the guy. Or if you are a front runner, just focus on holding your pace for one more lap, then one more, then one more. Or in XC, just tell yourself to hang on to the leader/keep the lead till this or that point on the coures and keep doing that.

It's much easier mentally to take chunks of a race and focus on each chunk individually instead of thinking of the entire race.

This is how I treat workouts as well, I don't think "oh shit, I have to do 20x400 today", I just focus on getting each rep done as best I can, don't think at 10 reps "only halfway through" but just get on to the next rep and do it.

Another thing is to not get too fired up and "inspired" before a race and get really angry. There was a huge difference in how my HS XC coach handled the "speech" before the state meet. My junior year, he tried to get the varsity pissed off at the other team that kept beating us and inspiring us to fight the pain and never give up. We got third.

The next year, he barely even gave a speech. He just told the varsity team, "You guys know what you need to do, get it done." The entire year felt much more "business-like." There weren't any inspiring speeches, we just raced. No pump ups or anything, they just went out and raced. We dominated the state meet that year. Of course there were other factors like our team before was young, some runners graduated, etc. but I think this was a factor.

Many people like to watch some sort of inspiring movie or read an inspiring book before a big race. I used to do this but I found doing something completely unrelated to the race helped much more. Don't even think about the race much the night before, just do what you would normally do. Then, when it's time to race, race. I think people build it up too much and this actually leads to worst performances.

Also, "fighting" the pain isn't really optimal. Instead, ACCEPT that it's going to hurt. To fight it and then it doesn't go away isn't going to help, but if you just accept it and move on forward, you won't waste mental energy fighting it and can instead focus on tactics, proper pacing, etc.

you've probably never heard this quote before, so I'll tell you- "To give anything less than your best is to sacrafice the gift." - Sylvester Stallone

pain is all mental, separate your brain from the rest of your body, and you'll be g2 ->

just focus on the finish line, and remember that the people that you're racing are just as tired as you

This is done through training to be mentally tough. Very simple.

Many runners don't do it. Many do mindless drills and have no idea why they are doing specific workouts. Start there.

don't whimp out, you'll feel like a loser

the biggest thing is staying relaxed. Wait for the race to come to you. Don't get nervous or tense up