Triathlon’s reigning queen, Chrissie Welllington, has announced she’s taking a year off from competition after winning all 13 of her Ironman races in the past five years, including 4 World Championships in Hawaii, and setting records for the fastest times ever for a female. She may or may not return to racing, but in the meantime, she is apparently doing all the things she wanted to, but lacked time for while focusing monomanically on being the world’s best female endurance athlete. Like run up to the top of the Empire State building (there’s a competition for that, and she placed in the top ten.) And write a book (A Life Without Limits, out now in the UK.) This article from CNN is excerpted from that.
She lists a number of ways she trains the mental side of her body, preparing to win even when she’s not at her best, as happened last October at Kona, when, in her words, she needed “the mental fortitude necessary to overcome … fears, pain, discomfort.”
Here’s the list: Have a mantra or song to repeat; Keep a bank of positive images; Practice visualization beforehand; Break the race into smaller, more manageable segments; Remember that training is learning to hurt; Get people to support you; Mentally recall inspirational people; Consider racing for a cause that is bigger than yourself.
All well and good and, if true, it has certainly worked for her. But as I read thru her list, I knew, from my own experience, that something was missing.
To find out what, I sifted through my own athletic history, which has culminated recently with five wins in my age group at Ironman races, including 3 course records. Maybe I’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to win the mental race, and also overcome physical limitations?
In the past 6 years, I’ve won a number of races, not just Ironman, many of them coming from behind. I believe that has required a mental toughness to keep going when others seem to falter, to not give in to the raging desire to just slow down and feel a little better, hang the cost to competition.
But I wasn’t always a winner. When I started out, at age 11, swimming breaststroke at my summer swim club and then in high school and college, I collected a lot of second place ribbons. There was always someone on my own team who was faster than I, and I never considered that I might be able to beat him. So I just cruised along, letting Skip Bullard, Peter Brumm, and Bob Stone get all the blue ribbons.
Years passed, and my competition switched from athletic to academic, then professional. I managed to get into a Little Three school (but not the Ivy League), graduate cum laude (but not magna or summa), and go on to medical school (again at a second tier private university, USC). When it came time to pick a residency, I set my sights higher, applying to and getting accepted by one of the top programs in the country. That should have told me something, but I had not yet learned my lesson.
On to a professional career, I joined a very large medical group, and found favor with two mentors who encouraged me to consider management within the group. I tried it, liked it, and advanced quickly. By the time I was 40, one of the mentors had decided he would step down as the head honcho of our 1,000 member group. I was one of the three logical choices to compete for his job.
But I was the youngest and least experienced. I thought to myself, “The prudent course here is to not compete, but rather seek to latch on as the number two to whoever wins, and position myself for the top spot in 5-7 years.” One Sunday, I was talking to my parents, retired in Snowmass, and mentioned this plan to my father.
I was never really one to seek advice from him, and I don’t remember that he ever volunteered it, either. He acted like, not only was I supposed to take care of myself, but like I was fully capable of making my own bad decisions with no help from him. But in this case, he said something that has stuck with me for the past 22 years, and increasingly informed my actions ever since.
“Why do you want to settle for number two, when you think you are capable of doing the top job right now?”
Looking back, this may have been his own longing for a second chance. In 1962, he was courted by Pratt & Whitney to leave General Electric, the two chief competitors for building large airplane jet engines. At GE, he was an engineer who dabbled in team management. At Pratt & Whitney, he was told explicitly he would be on the management track to, at least, a vice-presidency.
He ended up choosing to stay in Cincinnati over Hartford, in part, I felt, to not disrupt the lives of his children, but also, maybe, because he was a little reluctant to court success, doubting his own skills. He may have seen in me a chance to rectify that decision.
In any event, his comment had an immediate effect on me. I was galvanized to not only throw my hat in the ring, but also do “whatever it takes” to secure the favor of the selection committee and Board. By that, I don’t mean underhanded action equivalent to performance enhancing drugs. But I do mean stretching myself beyond the comfortable confines of my personality, training myself to act in ways my mentors felt appropriate for the group’s top leadership position.
And, from that moment on, it never entered my mind to think that I might not win the job. It seemed obvious that I was not only capable, but also that I was supposed to succeed. Looking back, it’s not obvious that I should have, but my feeling at the time was one of absolute certainty. I see now that an outside trigger of confidence was all I needed to take a step I was capable of, but unable to see for myself.
The same thing happened in my triathlon career. I never considered entering an Ironman, but Joan Hogan told me she saw it in my future. I never thought I was good enough to qualify for Kona, but Charley Wolf told me I was on the track. I never thought I could win my AG at an Ironman, but after I lucked into a Kona qualification in Wisconsin, I won my very next race, passing 6 people on the run.
It took another 2-3 years to learn how to turn the trick myself, rather than rely on other people. I started looking for lofty goals I felt I might be capable of. That led me to my course records, and repeat wins in Coeur d’Alene and Arizona. My conclusions?
• Confidence breeds success.
• Goals and dreams precede achievement.
And sometimes, a swift kick in the butt is all you need.