Watching more of the Commonwealth games and chatting to some clients after the weekends duathlon it is clear there are a variety of reasons why people race- race to win, race to compete, race for fun, race to find out. In the end it doesn’t matter what your drive is the main thing is that it is bigger than the fear of racing.
For someone like Olympic 1500m gold medallist Jacob Ingebritson, I think it is all about the win. It is all about the glory that comes from crossing the line in first place. Not content with his silver in the world 1500m, he moved on to the 5000m and made sure he got the glory. I think he loves all the attention and support from the crowd as he pumped them up mid race. And then there is so Peter Bol, who races for his family, his country and himself. He loves to compete but he loves the opportunities that running offers him. For Kelsey lee Barber it is the thrill of competition. Her specialty is to pull out a winning throw on her final attempt. Her mindset is it is not over until the final throw, there is always hope and she did it once again in Birmingham.
For y athletes I would like the overarching reason to race to be the love of racing. To love throwing your hat in the ring to find out where you area at and to enjoy the rush that comes from being involved. Unfortunately many let their fears win out and they don’t make it to the start line or if they do they freeze under the pressure and struggle to execute to their full capability.
For me life is short and your triathlon career is even shorter so if you get a chance to compete you grab it with both hands. The key is to set your mindset for what you want to get from the race. For me it was the thrill of it, to put it all out there and find out. I loved the nervous excitement you get before a race, it makes you feel alive and gives you real focus and purpose, then on race day I loved the trash talking and comradery before a big race and then finally during the race there was the adrenalin rush combined with pain and efforts to fight fatigue.
As a coach I love racing as a chance to test things out. It is a chance to work out what is working and what areas we need to work on. It is a chance to collect some real life data, to assess an athlete’s skills and see how strong their mind is. This makes it easy to create our training focus as we simply target the improvement areas and we look forward to the next race to test it all out.
However over the years I have known a lot of athletes who simply couldn’t find a valid enough reason to overcome their fears of racing. Their fear of being judged, their fear of not being able to perform, their fear of not winning and as a result they simply faded away from the sport with dreams left unfulfilled. Overcoming these fears is easier said than done as there is often past history, personality traits or other factors at play that need to be overcome.
But it is possible working with a coach or sports psychologist. But like most things you have to work hard at it. You have to invest time to learn, develop and continually refine skills. Do it enough and we can change the way we operate and swing the pendulum over to the love to race side.
In the end racing is why we do the sport, so it is vital to grow your reasons for racing and see what you can achieve. Again take the time to watch the highlights from the Commonwealth games and see what you can learn from watching and listening to the world’s best at play.
It was also fun to hear that I am not the only one who loves to watch sport. Apparently Jenn Lutze told her kids that there was no Playschool on TV when the Olympics were on!!
And on a follow-up from last week it has been interesting to watch Nick Kyrios win the Washington title and then beat world number 1 Daniil Medvedev. He certainly looks as if he is trying to find some other ways to cope with the pressure and in doing so is finding his opponents are the ones who often unravel.