Last week, I gave a little teaser about the idea of cultivating a self concept around racing. Did I get your attention?
Good. Because this post will tell you more about what it looks like and how my racing self concept shifted between IM Chattanooga 2018 and IM Chattanooga 2019.
Remember: who you are as a triathlete, while racing, matters.
And I don’t mean who you are in the sense of where you come from, how old you are or how nice your bike is. What I mean is who you really are…to yourself.
If someone were to walk up to you in transition moments before heading to the swim start and ask, “what kind of racer are you?” How would you answer? Are you confident? Aggressive? Calm? Certain? Nervous? Anxious? Excited?
No matter what emotion you feel, it always originates in your belief about your capacity on the day. So if you’re feeling calm, it’s because you’re telling yourself everything on race day will go smoothly. Emotions are powerful, but they never show up on race day alone. Those emotions always come from our thoughts and never the other way around.
This is really good news for those of us that tend to have race day nerves, anxiety or any other unwanted emotion. You don’t have to feel that way. Think about yourself has the director of your brain. You get to decide how you want to feel by directing your brain in any way you want.
Often we think that we’re at the effect of whatever shows up in our brain…whatever emotion or thought. But that’s just not true. If you’re the director, how do you want to direct your brain to think on race day? Because what and how you think creates the emotion that will fuel your day.
Now think about it this way…if someone were to walk up to you on the pool deck tomorrow morning and ask the same question, “what kind of racer are you?” Would you answer the same way as you would on race day?
Our self concept is grounded in our beliefs. And beliefs are just thoughts we think over and over again. What thoughts are you thinking daily that are intentionally or unintentionally creating your racing self concept?
Once again, who you are as a triathlete, while racing, matters. Especially if you’re going after a big goal.
Personally, I’ve experienced this first hand in a profound way. I’ve raced Ironman Chattanooga the last two years, but I was an entirely different triathlete on race day each year.
In 2018, I was consistent and diligent in my swimbikerun training. I was an avid member of the green team in Training Peaks! If training sessions didn’t go as planned in terms of pace or watts, I didn’t give too much attention as to why. I usually chalked it up to fatigue. I made sleep a priority, tried not to eat *too* much ice cream and made sure I was eating enough to support heavy training.
On race day, the swim was cancelled and I was bummed not to race the full distance, but totally in support of the decision. I biked a pretty even effort and put a lot of focus on my nutrition (maybe too much!) and was proud of how I rode the rolling course. Off the bike, things turned downhill a few miles in. Heat, humidity and major GI issues had me walking a lot in between porto john stops. It wasn’t pretty. I made it to the finish.
I cannot remember a single thing I thought about all day other than….where is the finish??
In 2019, I was consistent and diligent in my swimbikerun training. I was, yet again, an avid member of the green team in Training Peaks! But I was also very diligent in my mindset training. I trained my brain just as much as my body. When training sessions went as planned or didn’t go as planned in terms of pace or watts, I took the time to understand why. Where can I take responsibility for what happened? How can I learn and change it next time? I not only made sleep, nutrition, and hydration a HUGE priority, but spent a lot of time on my thought work.
Everyday I wrote down: I am the 30-34 AG champion at IM Chatt 2019. Every. Single. Day. And then I lived as if I were an age group Ironman champion everyday.
On race day, I raced with more gusto than I have ever felt. The swim was my strongest Ironman swim effort to date. I passed more people than I ever have in a swim. On the bike, I was focused on managing my hydration and body heat. I tried to keep my effort even despite wind and increasing temperatures. I clipped off other women in my age group the whole ride. I stayed focused on what I could control and connecting to the effort. Off the bike, I anticipated being hot but underestimated how hot. Once again, I stayed focused on problem solving and what I could control. I broke the race down to mile segments and stayed within the current mile. I remained steadfast in my commitment to my goal and did not back down my effort. (Full race recap here!)
I raced as if I was the 30-34 AG champion even though I came in 2nd.
Our whole lives we’re told that results are created by action. All of our brains do this. But notice above, in terms of my swimbikerun training I did pretty much the same actions in 2018 as in 2019. But the results we’re completely different. Why?
Because my racing self concept completely shifted. Who I was as a triathlete, while racing, mattered. It was the difference between the results I wanted and the results I created.
Every single one of us gets to define our own racing self concept. And then live in that concept day in and day out, from pool deck to finish line.
