Just believe!

Sometimes the difference between a great performance and a poor one is a very fine line, and a factor that can largely influence that is our mind.

There are so many things that are out of our control that could affect our performance on race day that we worry a lot about.  All this worry and stress just hinders our effort.

However, there is one thing we can do that will make us stronger, help us reach our potential, and maximise all the hard work we put in during the build-up.  

Just believe!

Believe in the hard work that you have done, believe in the thinking behind your training plan, believe in your goal and your pacing to get you there, believe in the nutrition plan that you will implement during your training, for recovery and for race, and believe in yourself. In your ability to stay strong and to deliver on the day.

This belief is a high level of commitment to your goal, and as I learnt from a cycle advert in my teenage years without commitment you are not going to out of bed on the rainy mornings, without it you are not going to bed early on a Saturday night, and without it you are just pretending.

If you go into your most important event not believing in any or all of the things that I have previously mentioned then you are just kidding yourself.  A miracle could happen, but more often than not it is going to get tough, and instead of staying focused and on task you are likely to start thinking, “oh I knew I was fit (or strong or fast) enough to get my goal”.

Never forget a positive something will beat a negative anything any time.  

Obviously trying to believe in yourself as easy as waking up and saying, “OK. Today I’m going to believe in myself from now on.”

We need to have a system to build-up that belief that will leave us staying strong in case a bit of doubt creeps in.

Like anything there needs to be a great foundation laid otherwise when it gets stormy it is all going to topple over.  You can't strengthen your belief on fake news.

If you believe you are going to complete a marathon well, but you haven't run more than 15km or if you are trying to smash your best time, but you haven't hit any of the markers along the way it is not realistic, and when things get dark that belief is going to disappear very quickly.

However, if you do the work and you document it well you can then that is your foundation. You can look back at your build-up and see the long sessions, see the speed sessions, and the races you have done in the build-up.

There are going to be some hiccups, issues, and bad workouts along the way.  As, long as these only total less than 20% of your training time you can be confident in your build-up.

Other things that we can include in our build-up that will directly affect us on race day is testing your equipment (for running you need shoes, socks, underwear, and clothing) testing your nutrition (both your breakfast and nutrition that you will use on the course), ability to drink and run, testing your pacing, and whether you need plasters, Vaseline (or some other type of anti-chaffing cream), or other type of body care.

You should try to test these under similar conditions to those that you get on race day.

If you can tick all these boxes then you have a huge amount of reasons to believe that you are going to have a great day out.

This does not guarantee that things are going to go flawless, but the idea is that you will be strong enough to push through the dark patches or just to settle you down when things aren't quite going to plan.  

Also it is important to note that if you are pushing towards a personal best performance it is not going to be easy or easier for than normal even if you are well prepared. You are just going to be able to maintain the hurt for longer.

To be able to stay on the edge you need to be calm and use your self-belief to help you do that. The calmer that we can stay during an event the more you stay in the flow and the better you can race.   If you start to doubt yourself you will tip off the edge.

Just believe!

All of my best performances have been done where I truly believed in the training that I had done, my race week preparation for the event, and my ability to produce the performance I wanted to. This is what most of the elite athletes do great. They are not arrogant they are just incredibly confident and that confidence is based on facts I.e. How talented they are, how many much they can train, how much they had had done in training, their results from fitness tests or preparation events, and how healthy they are.

In 2009 I spent most of summer building up for an Autumn Marathon without knowing exactly when or where before decided on racing the Lübeck Marathon.  That preparation when really well, as I recorded my biggest training weeks ever, raced well during these heavy weeks, I wasn't sick and knocked out some big long tempo sessions.  I knew I was going to run well, I knew I was going to race fast, and because I had done almost all my sessions alone that I could race solo.  

So I went from the gun, suffered, ran solo, believed the whole time, and win in a course record. The last 6km were hard and I could've slowed or stopped, but I believed that I could hold it together.