Mental Prep

Thanks to my wonderful wife for reminding me of the importance of preparing "mentally" for any goal you're striving for. Lately I've been a little too consumed with the day-to-day minutia results of training and I know that training to reach a peak does not occur in a linear manner. I tell my clients everyday, "if you look at your investment statements every month and expect it to go up, your bound for disappointment. However, if you trust in the plan you've set in place and have confidence in the process that in the long run you will do extremely well, then it will happen." Time and time again I see clients selling their investments when they're down 10, 20, 30% and none of them make those losses back. No wonder so many people have lost faith in the market. I have never sold any investment at a loss and 2009 is proving to be one of the best investment markets in the last 30 years! Unfortunately not many clients realize that and it's only because they haven't prepared themselves mentally for the inevitable ups and downs that they are going to experience.

There are definitely ups and downs in training as well, I have days where I feel like a 5km run at a snail's pace feels like I've just done a 1/2 Ironman. Then there are days where I can run light and easy for 21- 30kms and I'm just flying along. I've been trying to keep reminding myself that the ups and downs of training are normal and gains do not occur in a linear manner. I think most triathlete, type A personalities expect things to progress better and better and never see a plateau but I know my body doesn't work like that.

Mentally preparing for a race or for anything in life is so important that it almost outweighs the physical prep. It reminds me of a run I went on with my friend Chris when I was helping him prepare for Ironman Austria a few years ago. We had been doing long runs every Sunday for a number of weeks and I was feeling very light and fast. At that point I could run about a 37:45 10k and about a 1:25 half-marathon, I was feeling so good and both of us were running very well together. We were going to do a 2hr brisk pace run that Sunday and Chris told me that a friend of his was going to join us. He said he hadn't been training in a while but he'd run with us for as long as he could. When we met at Eau Claire I was greeted by a slightly paunchy guy in his mid-40s and I immediately thought "this guy is not going to last the first 2k. What is he doing here?"

We took it easy at the start but up'ed the pace in the first 5kms, we were averaging about 14-15kms/hr and I was feeling the effort of such a hard run very early on. Paunchy guy was right there, breathing like a racehorse giving it everything he had but not losing one step on us. I couldn't believe it! I was in the best shape of my life and I felt like I was hurting and this guy was still right there! What's going on here? He wasn't in better shape but he was one of the toughest guys "mentally" I'd ever met. He stayed with us step for step the entire run and everyone was exhausted by the end. He didn't look as exhausted as I did but he taught me something that day, being mentally tough can take you far, far beyond what you thought you were capable of. At this stage in my life I'm well aware of how important mental preparation is. Sometimes I just need a little reminder and that's when I recount the story of the paunchy guy with a herculean running effort during a cool April Sunday in Calgary.

It was only later that I learned that this guy used to race with the Canadian national team for the 800m. Figures!

Check out Amber's post on mental prep, it's a great reminder.