Feeling Blah? You're Not Alone

Tips to Harness Motivation

It’s a phenomenon every runner has experienced: Some training sessions, you feel motivated, energetic and capable of pushing your body to its limits. Other days, you barely feel inspired enough to plod through a recovery run.

Sports psychologists say low-motivation days are no accident, and say negative thoughts can stymie motivation and jeopardize performance, for pros and weekend warriors alike.

“I think every athlete has those moments of doubt,” says 10,000m American record-holder Shalane Flanagan, who worked with sports psychologist Greg Dale while running cross country and track at University of North Carolina. “My doubts are usually along the lines of, ‘Maybe I’m not fit enough or strong enough to do this.’”

Flanagan combats those motivation-zappers with visualization exercises, including one she calls upon often frequently during tough workouts.

“I’ll pretend I’m grinding out the last 600 against the top Ethiopian runners,” Flanagan says. “I just visualize running against them, and getting that fast time, or winning the race, during a workout, and it gives me that little boost of motivation.”

Sports psychologists offer the following tips for other runners looking to harness their motivation:

Identify negative thoughts. Sports psychologist Alison Arnold, founder ofHead Games Sports in Westford, Massachusetts, has coached a host of Olympic athletes and warns that negative thoughts can be sneaky. We know better than to tell ourselves we're about to have a bad workout. We're more likely to make definitive statements like, “I always get tired around this point,” or, “I never run well in the morning,” Arnold says. And Greg Dale, now a professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics and the director of sports psychology and leadership programs for Duke University athletic teams, says something as simple as the weather can spur a chain of performance-hampering thoughts. “If you say, ‘Man, it’s going to be hot out today,’ you plant a seed before you ever get started that it’s going to be a crappy run,” Dale says. Dale tells athletes to keep a journal tracking their thoughts before, during and after workouts to learn how their thought patterns affect their performance.

Substitute positive thoughts – or at least neutral ones. Dale says it’s important to acknowledge negative thoughts, then to rationalize them with thoughts that are “positive, truthful, and relevant to you.” “You don’t need to tell yourself, ‘I’m the fastest runner in world and I feel wonderful today,’” Dale says. Arnold says it’s OK to take "one step up on the feel-good scale." Rather than telling yourself you feel fabulous when you’re slogging through a long run, simply tell yourself you can make it to the next curve in the road, Arnold says.

Find out what works, then feed it. Once you figure out which positive thoughts fuel your best performance, feed them with breathing, music and continued positive self-talk, Arnold says. Dale suggests having a specific plan to direct your brain toward performance-boosting thoughts during difficult parts of races or workouts. Arnold says a pre-run ritual of stretches, music or breathing exercises can “anchor the mind, and prepare the mind for what it’s about to do.”

Infuse long-term goals with passion. Every runner should have a long-term goal they’re passionate about, and should remind themselves frequently why that goal is important with visual representations and key phrases, Arnold says. This can mean a course map on the refrigerator, a motivational quote on the bathroom mirror or a billboard with inspirational magazine cutouts and photos. Arnold recommends dedicating races, either formally or informally. “When you’re doing something for a cause, there’s emotion involved,” Arnold says. "That's what will carry you through the hard days."

Let yourself feel disappointment. Then, move past it. Arnold says it’s important to “honor yourself” by not squelching feelings of anger or sadness after a disappointing workout or race. But she says it’s also important to consciously move past the disappointment. Dale suggests using visualization, saying one athlete he worked with imagined pouring a bucket of water over her head to wash away negative feelings. Arnold says it helps to diffuse a difficult runs with humor and “a lightness of being.” “It is so important to not take ourselves too seriously,” Arnold says. “There is such a difference between saying, ‘I can’t finish this run today’ and saying, ‘I guess today’s my day to just walk and smell the roses.’"

Channel past successes. Dreading your speed workout? Spend a few minutes visualizing your best race before heading out the door, says Eugene sports psychology consultant and marathoner Kay Porter. In the last few laps of the 10K in the 2008 Olympics, Flanagan imagined she was finishing a tough workout on the American Tobacco Trail in North Carolina. “It made me feel like it was just another hard workout,” Flanagan says. “It calmed my nerves, so I could execute the way I’d execute in practice.” The proof it worked: Flanagan netted a bronze medal. 

Open Water Anxiety - all gone!

I stumbled across this piece in "Triathlete" - a good overview of how not to freak out in an open water swim.

'Nuff said: 

A few years ago, watching an open-water swim left a lasting impression on me. It was at the Cayuga Lake Triathlon in Ithaca, NY, where my wife, Alice, was participating in the 1.5k relay leg.

I watched five waves, each with some 80 participants, start the swim. Each time the same pattern unfolded: Following the start, 10 percent of the field swam steadily and confidently down the course. Another 20 percent swam reasonably well in their wake. Fully 70 percent swam uncertainly at best, barely at all in some cases, stopping frequently, switching to breaststroke, turning on their backs. Generally they took five to ten minutes to settle their nerves before making steadier progress. 

Alice, a skilled swimmer with 30 years of pool experience, who had swum two miles and more at Total Immersion Open Water camps, was among those who looked overwhelmed and unable to swim at anything like her true ability until the field spread out.

New triathletes have a right to be a little timid when it comes to the open-water swim. Even 2008 Olympic open-water silver medalist David Davies said he felt "violated by people swimming all over me." If an Olympic medalist feels that distressed, what chance does a triathlete have of being comfortable in a chaotic swim start?

Actually, a very good one.

When it comes to swimming, the majority of triathletes have a more urgent need to learn how to be comfortable than to increase speed or fitness. Here’s my four-part prescription for new triathletes to maximize their chances of a safer, happier swim in their first race and every race.

1. Learn Balance. This is the primary skill that gives you a sense of having control over your body in the water. In TI, balance is the foundation for every subsequent swimming skill. Learning to control that sinking legs sensation gives you confidence you can learn to control other things—like anxiety in open water. And feeling support for the water brings an overall sense of calm.

2. Practice Mindful Swimming. Replacing reactive thinking with calm, observant, reflective thinking is integral to the process of learning balance and every subsequent skill in the Total Immersion method. The ability to exert control over what and how you think in an environment where you may not be able to control much else is the best defense against anxiety. When teaching Total Immersion Open Water camps, I always teach our students how to use focus to create a “cocoon of calm” in the midst of exterior turmoil.

3. Practice with a Tempo Trainer. An inevitable result of the fight-or-flight response in open water is a shift to high-rate survival strokes, which greatly increases respiration rate. Faster, shallower breaths make you feel light-headed, making an uncomfortable situation even more so. Using a Tempo Trainer to encode a controlled tempo in your nervous system will also control your respiration rate.

4. Avoid the rush. After the start signal, take your time before you begin swimming, and/or start at the perimeter of the pack. “I remind my triathletes of pythagorean geometry: On a 200-yard stretch, if you start 60 feet outside the most direct path to the first buoy, you’ll only swim one yard farther to get there,” Says Total Immersion coach Dave Cameron.

What to do when anxiety strikes anyway?

It’s not the end of the world if you still feel your heart, breathing and stroke rates getting away from you. Here’s how to handle that.

Hit the reset button. It’s so common to feel some anxiety early in the swim leg, that all new triathletes should have a plan for recovering from anxiety—and practice it in advance. The athletes I observed at the Cayuga Lake event had the right idea: Swim 10 or 12 strokes of breaststroke—a more naturally relaxing style than crawl. Stretch out fully with head hanging between your shoulders. Emphasize a leisurely glide, exhaling fully to clear CO2 and slow respiration. As you do, remind yourself how great it is to be living it in such a vibrant manner. Take a few more strokes and breaths to visualize how you want your crawl stroke to feel, and then get back to it calmly and easily.

Become the "quiet center." I personally love pack swimming and swim better with close company than alone. A primary reason I enjoy it so much is that it sharpens my focus. When swimming with others in open water, I observe their strokes and turn it into a game, testing my ability to swim with a quieter, more leisurely stroke than anyone around me. In fact I enjoy it so much I’m sometimes sorry to see the race end. When in a pack, strive to swim with a more relaxed stroke than all those around you. This will help turn your swim leg from pressure-filled into a game or work of art.

see ya in the lake

Mellow Johnny