In an attempt to provide true insight into the more important factors that make up peak sporting performance, I'm going to document my own experiences preparing for and recovering from a long distance endurance event. In my case, it is the 2014 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon. What follows is the third installment of what I hope will provide an insightful look into the mind of an ordinary bloke who, while extremely competitive in nature, competes for the love of the activity and the process. Attaining one's desired results doesn't have to be all blood and guts, it really can be fun and pain free!
“Don’t worry if you start to feel good during a marathon; it won’t last long.”
Don Kardong, US Olympic Marathoner.
Whilst the above quote is not verbatim, the profound and sage Kardong does have a point. Racing to one’s maximum capability hurts. In fact, I cannot think of one competition over almost three decades of my own endurance sports participation where I did not consider quitting at least once. The human brain is a powerful mechanism, where an individual’s current state of emotions relative to the circumstance can often predetermine the result.
Why are many athletes so negative in their attitude?
I ask myself that question often, especially in conversation with fellow competitors before and after an event. It is as if many people fail to achieve there desired results before the start gun has even been fired. This “vibe” is often compounded immediately after crossing the finish line, where the “could have, would have, should have” analysis is imparted to the first possible recipient in earshot. Whilst I do admit to being rather unsympathetic to this sort of “excuse-mania,” I believe that sub-par results highlight flaws in such individual’s respective mindsets and motivations, where pure motivation is distinctly lacking. This superficial approach is further exacerbated by the inhibitor of measurement, be it in comparison to other athletes or via unrealistic parameters mentioned in Part 2 of this essay.
Change your attitude!
Years ago as a dedicated teenage triathlete, I read an article outlining a professional competitor’s journey to better swimming performance. The basic message of this piece was twofold: keep it simple and adjust your attitude. This article had a profound effect on me that winter, where developing my weakest discipline became an inspirational personal project, the result being improved swimming performance culminating in long-desired provincial selection that summer season.
It’s funny how a little shift in attitude can be so pivotal. I’m reminded of this more and more as the years go by and have come to the following conclusion: peak performance in sport, like many things, is definitely not an exact science.
I choose to view sport as an ideal vehicle to enhance personal growth. Key factors to this ideal include developing a keen instinct and awareness of time relative to familiar or unfamiliar surroundings, sans any quantitative advice (read: stopwatch). I figure if that if I continue to develop this sort of “sixth sense,” the payoff includes such enhanced abilities in pacing, intuition and basic common sense. This ability goes further to benefit actual competition. Case in point distance road running: there are many athletes who keep track of exact kilometer splits, effectively basing their entire race on meeting their own prerequisite elapsed parameters. But what happens if the first 13km of a marathon are on a slight uphill and into an ever so light headwind? How does an athlete react to misplaced distance marker boards on the route? A route change involving more hills than in previous years? Extra distance recorded on their GPS devices in comparison to the advertised twenty-six-point-two miles?
Needless to say that the entire above hypothesis turned out to be actual reality in the 2014 Sanlam Cape Town Marathon. Many athletes were flustered, their rigid pre-race plans not panning out in light of these and other factors. The beauty of not running with a stopwatch is that the athlete is free and in charge of their own destiny.
In light of the hypothetical becoming reality, consider therefore the following conflicting emotions:
Head wind and uphill:
Negative – slower time splits; more energy expenditure attempting to stick to these splits.
Positive – ignorance is bliss; slower pace means not going out too fast; wind in the hair!
Misplaced kilometer boards:
Negative – perceived (yet false) pace drop off; speeding up to ensure equal time splits; despondency.
Positive – ignorance really is bliss; who cares?????
More hills:
Negative – slower kilometer splits (again); speeding up to ensure equal time splits (again); despondency (again).
Positive – pace variation; greater range of muscle use; recover nicely on downhill; change of scenery; slower pace uphill means better consumption of liquid.
Extra distance:
Negative – pace drop off in final kilometer; excuse for poor performance
Positive - ignorance really, really is bliss; extra distance means better than expected performance; instinct tells athlete that the last kilometer is long – post race fact finding confirms it!
Train your brain! One of the greatest health and fitness resources are the writings of Dr. Phil Maffetone. One of the themes in his Big Book of Endurance Training is developing an athlete’s internal clock. With great references to Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity, Maffetone’s anecdotes influenced my own quest for improving perception of time, where a sprinkling of over-distance sessions proved pivotal this year as well as 2013.
I had earmarked early August for one of these sessions. The basic intention was to spend an extended amount of time engaged in running activity, where the actual duration would be markedly longer than my intended marathon race time. To achieve this required some copying of Maffetone’s analogy, where over forty minutes of fast walking was added to this long distance session, split fairly evenly before and after actual running. So, what turned out to be a training session of around 3hr45 in duration could in essence be broken down as follows:
- 20 min walk
- Just over 3 hours of run/walk protocol at an easy pace
- 20 min walk
The benefits of a session like this are many, where going beyond normal training duration in excess does cultivate a certain level of self-confidence. Almost four hours on foot is quite excessive at any effort; using extended periods of brisk walking to achieve this duration takes the pressure off the athlete and enhances the time taken to recover effectively. The key is to save up for an effort like this – you certainly cannot do this too often (I did it once only). I believe that the mental strength gained from this sort of effort far outweighs any physical benefit. If done sparingly, these sorts of sessions can be pivotal in any athlete’s preparation.
What are the other true pivotal moments in any buildup?
Perhaps we should explore some less likely examples in Part 4.
