What are the keys to achieving maximum performance when you compete? I'm going to try to help you... Today you have a race and you want to perform at your best. You have been training for many weeks and you hope that all the sessions you have been doing will be rewarded and you will make a good time. It doesn't matter if it's a marathon or a fun run. It doesn't matter if this race is your goal for the season or if it's just a training run. It is a competition and you want to give your best.
In Runnea you have been able to read excellent articles about what to do and what not to do the day of the competition;
- Do not use your shoes for the first time
- Have previously tested the food and drink that you are going to use.
- Warm up as you usually do, etc...
For my part, I'm going to talk about three keys that will help you mentally be at your best and you can get your best time, giving everything you have inside.
BE EGOISTIC
With your CUSTOMS: in a good way, of course. We all have habits before and on the day of the race. These rituals, habits, ... many of them done unconsciously, help us to control the tension, to focus on the race. Keep them, do not change them.
If your habit is to have breakfast with headphones listening to music, do it, even if you have gone with several colleagues to spend the night in a hotel and you are going to have breakfast together (all chatting sitting at the table and you with headphones on). If your habit is to go well in advance of the race (to be relaxed) or vice versa, you prefer to go at the last moment because you are nervous to be at the start, do it.
Or if you are one of those who when you are in the box prefer silence, keep it even if someone comes up to talk to you. If you're one of those people who talk to anyone who is near you, whether you know them or not, do it too.
And I say selfish because sometimes we feel compelled to change our habits. For example, you like to go very early to the race but in this one you go with several friends and they tell you that it is not necessary to go so early, that as it is next to home, we leave already dressed and to arrive ten minutes earlier is enough. And so as not to "look bad with them" you agree. No. Don't do it; be selfish. Your routine is your routine. And besides, they are all runners and they also have their quirks. If you tell them a simple - "I'll go before; it's my habit" or -'"I always listen to music before the race, it relaxes me"- they will understand, for sure; they also run and have their habits.
QUESTIONS
They usually assail us shortly before the race starts. What if that flu that kept me from training for a week, what if that day I was supposed to do a long run and I had to work and couldn't do it, what if just yesterday I didn't sleep well... we start to remember everything we should have done, but didn't. And any of those things become doubts. And any of these aspects become essential and essential for the race.
Usually the first reaction is to get those ideas out of our heads. We succeed, but after a few minutes they come back and come back; it's all we can think about.
What to do with negative thoughts. Let them flow. Yes, it's that easy. Okay you missed a week of training, and also that long run day, and you haven't done as much technical running as I thought you would.... Well, let all the negative thoughts come to the surface until there are none left to come out. From that point on you have to assimilate where you are and think positive. -Okay; that's all behind me, but I start the race in a few minutes. My fitness is what I am now and it is what it is; you can't change it. And I have trained very hard for many weeks. How much is it to have missed five, six training sessions in a five-month planning. Very little. I'm ready and at the top of my game.
Let the negative thoughts flow and then think positive. What's done is done. And I'm ready for the race. And the negative thoughts won't come back.
EXHAUST
Especially in long races, the famous wall in the marathon, when fatigue begins to affect us and our legs weigh us down. And we start to doubt if we will be able to finish, if we will reach the finish line. We have to do two things:
Think about all the training you have done. You have prepared for this race, you have prepared for this moment that you knew could come, but you have worked to overcome it.
Recreate yourself in the moment when you are going to reach the finish line. Think about the last curve and then the finishing straight, the last meters and finally the finish line. And you have to think about these last meters in as much detail as you can. You're on the finish straight, four, five hundred meters; imagine it full of people, you approach one of the sides because there will be your friends or family watching you, you're going to shake hands (right, left ...). Those last meters you are going to accelerate to shave a few seconds off the clock or you are going to slow down to enjoy it even more... you are approaching the finish line; you will raise both hands, just one, maybe you will clench your fist... you will cross the finish line with your left or right foot...
Think about those last meters. And with all the details you can think of. The more details you have in that last run, the more you will experience those feelings of pride for arriving, satisfaction, goal achieved... that will help you to overcome that bump in which you are and get to the finish line.
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