Segment 11: Season PR Mindset
Season’s Best Mindset
I’ve spent hundreds of hours at coaching clinics but the most significant gold nuggets I’ve ever learned are often in passing. I spoke with John Poag at a coffee shop about his upcoming season and he said we like to think of the season as a black whiteboard at the start of the season. From there, I could easily see that there are often 2 mindsets they adopt, quite often they transcend from one into another. Most athletes spend the first 2 years developing their running performances and are constantly seeking out time as the biggest validator for their success or failure. At some point, they move away from a PR-centric mindset and become more competitive with themselves and others. They appreciate a PR when they get it but it’s not the sole reason they line up. At their best - they are making an effort to be competitive in the field they’re racing and if they’re lucky - they are racing to win and play “the game” of racing and winning races.
Mindset #1 is often a messy whiteboard with their season’s old or most recent PR directly in the center at 100 font. It is the dominant thought in their mind.
Mindset #2 has the PR in size 10 font in the upper corner and the whiteboard shows the progression of the season with each race having places of progress and places for improvement.
Key Points
Don’t get caught looking backwards
Treat your season like a whiteboard
Getting caught in “getting it right”
Not everything is a test
You need mistakes
Learn how to control your thoughts
Don’t Look Backwards
Athletes often struggle to take a focus on the “right now” when they aren’t PR’ing or returning from an injury. The book Master of change talks about how when we experience change - like the start of a new season or an injury - we often look backwards with a goal of returning back to that “normal” or a return to homeostasis. Brad Stulberg speaks to an idea called Allostasis that requires us to move from thinking about returning back to homeostasis that instead we need to create a new normal and develop our own version of what normal is now.
When we spend time looking back and lusting for the past we can find ourselves focus on how to get BACK to where we were and we will never arrive there, it’s behind us and we’ll never acheive that place because we grow and change at every level of the game. So after an injury, setback, or slow start to a season - look at how oyu cna make the most of the season and look at how you can improve it moving forward. If you’re closing in on the end of the season - what areas did you make progress? I promise there are many areas, you just need to look for them!
Whiteboard Mentality
Be willing to take a goldfish mentality to bad races and sub-par performances. Once you’ve learned from them, you need to move on and forget them. It still goes on your “record” but there isn’t a single person who has a flawless record that went exactly as they planned. As I spoke in the video, you can get upset that every performance doesn’t show up as a PR, or you can look at each performance to tweak and adjust to improve from the front of the season to the back of the season. As you approach the end of your season, take some time to reflect and define what your strengths and weaknesses are this season. How do you set up your next race to leverage your strengths?
Don’t put your PR front and center
Focus on improving in 1-2 areas in each race
Improvement requires self-analysis
Success leaves clues - go looking!
Controlling the Negativity
If you struggle to get excited for races, the next best place is the middle ground. Not excited, not negative - just existing in a place between the 2 where you can easily move into a focused and motivated environment.
I was listening to one of my favorite albums recently and Tyler Childers song Purgatory describes that middle ground perfectly. While it would be great or even “ideal” to be amped and excited, it takes practice to change your state. You have to allow yourself to relinquish your death grip on the things you can’t control and instead focus on the effort.
I know that Hell
Is just as real as I am surely breathin'
But I've heard tale
Of a middle ground, I think will work for me
In the last 11 weeks, I have spoken in depth about how to manage your state and how to try and shift your mindset. It takes practice and often self-reflective dialogue, soaked in self belief, and a honest willingness to let yourself get uncomfortable. I often find that the hell that we experience as runners is not the discomfort we feel but the fear of how much it hurts to put out and effort and not have it add up the way we want to. It’s okay to hang out in purgatory for a time but, challenging yourself to get keyed up and get back on the horse and try to build yourself up and get excited for a race, even after a bad one is part of the process. Just don’t get stuck moping around and kicking rocks, you’re in control of how you show up - you always have been!
One more lyrics from Tyler that always feels like Cross Country:
Universal Sound - Purgatory, 2017
My mind's a mile a minute, and my thoughts they bark like hounds
I focus on my breathing and the universal sound
Great is the enemy of good enough
There is no download this week. Instead I have a 2nd Brad Stulberg reference for you guys. It talks about the process of consistency and why you don’t need to hit every workout out of the park and that it’s about what you do consistently that gets results. It’s better to have 7 good workouts in a row instead of 2 STUNNING sessions amongst a mixed back of poor or subpar sesssion in a 7 week build up. Go for consistently good vs. the pressure of perfection every time you lace up for a hard session.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2348226/case-being-good-enough
