I ran the Philadelphia Marathon in 2022, finishing with a time of 3:16, a 11mins PR. It was only my third marathon and I was proud of it because I committed to 6 months of training for it.
I finished the race feeling tired (of course) but also proud of myself because I did not hit the wall and did not hate myself. I was very focused throughout the whole 26.2 miles and managed to apply almost all the mental skills resources that I have been practicing and sharing with my clients.
Here are some of the skills that I practiced to help me prepare better for the race:
- Setting goals for the race. This is an important step for me because I wanted to be able to run a better timing than what I did in Boston Marathon earlier in the year. But I had to make sure I knew what time I was aiming for and what pace I was supposed to run to achieve my goal time. Setting the goal time was my outcome goal, and what’s most important is to set process goals which are the daily things that I can focus on in order for me to reach my outcome goal.
- Challenging the irrational beliefs. My negative self-talk can be pretty over-powering and that is not going to help me run a good marathon. So writing down all the things I believed about myself and challenging them helped me put doubts in my doubts.
- Building confidence should not be left to chance. I was very intentional in making sure I knew why I wanted to run the marathon and why I think I was able to hit my goals.
- Recognizing my distractions, reframing them and refocusing on things that actually help me in my race. I call them the 3Rs. I practiced using the 3Rs in my daily runs so that when race day came, it was almost automatic for my brain to recognize, reframe and refocus.
- I spent a few minutes each day in the last few days leading up to race day to visualize what my race was going to be like, what are the possible things that can go wrong and what I can do about them. This is a powerful tool that I encourage every athlete to adopt into their training.
Of course, the daily training that I did helped me physically, and I was very detailed about the nutrition that I was consuming on a daily. But as we all know, the marathon is a mental game so I wanted to make sure that I was prepared mentally too. I’m glad I did.
If you are interested to know more about these strategies and curious on how I can help you prepare better for your upcoming races/matches/events, let me know.
-Aisyah