Be Unconcerned about Other Competitors: Mental Attributes of Elite Runners #12/15
#12 — Be unconcerned about other competitors.
Here’s a definition of anxiety I like: Worry about the future.
Tomorrow rarely goes as planned, and yet, we can spend an obsessive amount of energy trying to predict and orchestrate it.
When things do go south, too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad moments into really bad moments. Unhelpful perceptions invade our minds and throw off our compass. And when people panic, they make mistakes.
We are not victims of fortune. While we don’t necessarily get to choose the situations in which we find ourselves, we do get to decide what we will make of every situation we’re in.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, what we need “is not courage but nerve control, cool-headedness. This one can get only by practice.”
The practice of elite runners is not simply aimed at developing bodily readiness for racing but also practicing mental readiness for the race day situation.
The mental game has become a point of focus in popular sports media nowadays. And for good reason, it does matter — it’s always mattered. Ideally, the focus on training of the mind and body should carry equal weight.
Interestingly, when studying top runners on race day, what I found is most focused on competing against themselves. They know and respect their competitors, but are not afraid or worried about them. They’re part of the game. But the focal point is an interest in seeing what one can do today to explore and expand their limits.
That’s what I love about the sport of running: exploration and expansion of our limits, both collective and individual. When a runner runs a new personal best by breaking 4:00 in the mile or 4 hours in the marathon it is a moment to be celebrated. It represents a breakthrough of a previous personal limit.
And it’s our own limits which we are really competing against, albeit alongside other competitors on race day.