Have the Ability to Regain Composure before Competition: Mental Attributes of Elite Runners #9/15
#9 — Have the ability to regain composure before competition.
Many wannabe elites need everything perfect on race day for them to perform well. Perfect weather. Perfect timing and types of meals. Perfect pacing. Perfect warm-up routine. Perfect playlist. And so on.
I once had a runner tell me the reason she underperformed in a race is because she thought her pre-race meal was cooked in a pan that gluten products had been previously cooked in and was not washed well enough.
Huh, what?
A few weeks later we figured out her ferritin levels were borderline anemic. Meaning, her own history of poor nutrition choices over a sustain period of time is what sabotaged her race day performance, not “Gluten-gate.”
Unexpected things happen to us all the time. Things rarely go as we plan. In fact, much of life is a random and complex march. We have far less control over our lives than we like to think.
But our need for control is so great that we are fantastically apt at constructing meaningful stories out of meaningless correlations.
What we do have control over is our attitude and response to the situation and circumstances we find ourselves in.
Just because conditions aren’t exactly to your liking or you don’t feel ready doesn’t mean you get a pass. Successful people thrive on what many would consider stress in unpredictable and inhospitable situations. They perceived stressful situations not as threats or burdens but as challenges they can overcome. They have a certain hardness about them. We call them “tough-as-nails.”
People who frequently fall short of their dreams and potential often use stress and the avoidance of stress as a scapegoat for failure. Their failures are not their fault, the world is conspiring against them, cooking their food in gluten contaminated pans.
When the unexpected does happen on race day, elites are able to cope by zooming in, ignoring the noise and chaos around them, fixating on the task at hand, and getting the most of themselves in the moment, without worry about pace or outcome. The result will be the result. It’s only a record of their best effort that day. Success or failure, they’ll be back, ready for the next challenge.
And the wannabes? If it wasn’t for being a victim of Gluten-gate, they would have ran out of this world.