Goal Setting and the Mindset of the Marathoner

Goal Setting Ideas for 2011: Running a Marathon and the Mindset of a Marathoner

There is nothing more powerful than a great idea whose time has come.

Someone else has the goal of helping you achieve your goal. Mark Victor Hansen. In other words the universe wants you to complete your goal.

Goal choices are more important than abilities. See below.

Focus on completion rather than perfection.

Goal Setting a la Tony Robbins: There are three kinds of goals

1—Minimum Must: No matter what this goal will be achieved. In our case finishing the race would probably be a must.

2—Goal: this is where most people start, usually with a time goal

3—Stretch Goal: maybe qualifying for another race based on your performance.

You do not have to believe you can achieve a goal to set a goal. So even if you don’t believe in your “core” that you can finish a marathon set the goal anyway.

You don’t have to believe you can run a marathon to set a goal to run a marathon. If you develop the Mindset of a Marathoner you will be able to act “as if” you can. Think about what actions you would take if you were a Marathoner.

In my talks prior to marathons I usually tell the audience to walk around the week before their event “as if” they are proudly hanging their finishers medal from their neck. Acting “as if” you have already done something helps to accomplish the goal.

Goal Setting is a 10 step PROCESS

1—Think about what you want and write it down.

2—Decide exactly what you want and write it down. This is where goal setting begins. Choosing the right goal is important here.

3—Look at your goal and make sure it is measurable. Running and finishing a marathon or half marathon are indeed measurable in more ways that finishing time.

4—Identify the reasons why you want the goal and write them down. Think back to the reasons you first joined FBF. Some want to lose weight, some want to achieve fitness, some want to do it as a tribute to someone else important in their lives, etc. Naturally the more internal the reason the more powerful it is in terms of motivation.

5—Decide an exact date you want to accomplish your goal and write it down. This is easy since running events have deadlines.

6—Make a list of action steps and write them down. Again here comes the Mindset of a Marathoner concept. If you were a marathoner what steps would you take to insure you would be ready to finish a marathon. Steven Covey talks about beginning with the end in mind.

7—Create a plan from your list of action steps and write it down. One of these simply could be to follow the FBF training plan.

8—Take ACTION. As the Nike commercial says Just Do It!! If this is difficult see your local sport psychologist ;)

9—Do something every day; follow your FBF training plan.

10—View, Visualize, and speak your goals daily. I have said it many times in talks to running groups that visualization is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. If nothing else, visualization shows that you have done something before.

Lastly, it is ok to set a goal and not achieve it. If you set a goal and don’t achieve it don’t look at that as a failure. What it means is you picked the wrong goal. Goal choice is critical in the process. Simply go back through the 10 step process and refine your goals.

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Mental Toughness on the Run

I have two outcomes for my talk today. First I want to share a series of great mental training tips and strategies. You can actually practice these on your training runs. It is a way of getting double the benefit of your training runs.

I also want to remind you to use my blog. It has lots of articles on very similar topics to what I am talking about today. Many are from previous presentations I’ve given.

My Top Ten Tips for Psyching up for a race:

My friend Stewart Hughes lives in Utah and bought a home near Salt Lake and it had a tennis court. So he decided to learn tennis and hired the U of Utah tennis coach to give private lessons to his family. One day during a conversation it came out this coach was doing some research for a sport psych degree on the personality makeup of world class tennis players and athletes.

The coach said there were five key traits and one of them accounted for 80% of the effects. They are: self-confidence

Character

Emotional stability

Athletic Ability

Self-Motivation

Self-Motivation was the most important factor in sports excellence and probably in marathon training as well.

How do you get Self-Motivation? By setting goals and meeting commitments.

2—Goals are usually considered as the single most important tool for improving performance in sports. Think of developing smart goals: S specific; M measurable; A achievable; R recorded; T timebased.

I ran across an interesting way to look at goals: a Pyramid with 3 layers, allowing you to see the big picture.

The base of the pyramid is your vision or story describing the big picture and how you want it to look. These are your long term goals, precise levels of achievement you want to accomplish: finish the marathon, qualify for Boston, a time goal.

On the next level are your weekly performance goals, specifying frequency, intensity, duration of workouts for the week.

At to top are your physical and mental goals for each training session. Daily goals.

By using this pyramid approach, every workout is directly connected to your big story. Feeling good about achieving your daily and weekly goals is motivational and has a cumulative effect on your attitude come race day.

3—Know the course---good to practice this on training runs; helps to plan race strategy accordingly.

4—Learn to regulate level of tension and use relaxation techniques before and during the race to control tension. Stay loose and Centered.

Relaxation training; Deep breathing; muscle tensing and relaxing.

Bud Winter San Jose track coach Relax and Win book; 90% rule

Bud was probably first sports psychologist. 100% effort not as fast as 90%

Glen Mills went to one of his workshops; he later became the coach for Usani Bolt.

5—develop Positive affirmations/power words

Using Positive self-talk

“I am comfortable being uncomfortable.” “All the Way” Yes I can

Smooth and relaxed Tough Strong

I am doing the best I can

Mood words like Power and Strength

Use these thoughts and words especially at those moments when negative thoughts show up; they are sure to do so during a race.

6—Use Imagery before and during the race. Why imagery is effective: free throw shooting studies.

Influences performance; it can enhance athletic performance and can be a more effective practice tool than no practice at all. Effective in basketball shooting, volleyball serving, tennis serving, golf shots, placekicking, figure skating, swimming starts, diving, skiing, running, dance and rock climbing.

For example:

Imagine yourself at difficult points in the race, feeling calm, focused and energetic.

If fatigued picture your lower body as a horse on which you are riding; going downhill picture self as a sled; Frank Shorter Gold in 1972 Munich imagined his legs as bicycle wheels

Plan for and during the event use, specific images(visual, phrases, words) at particular cue spots.

Experiment: close your eyes and imagine you can see yourself running in your mind’s eye

7—Use thought strategies

Association---scanning your body, stride, respiration

Dissociation—musical phrases, counting trees, thinking of friends

Reframing the Pain: Sensations of Endurance Sport Effort

This is the body’s way of telling me I am running at my race pace

The feelings/sensations are feedback

8—Run for yourself, not against someone else

9—Expect at least something which you planned on won’t go the way you planned it. Decide now how you will forgive yourself then.

10---similarly, when you know you will be facing an emotional dilemma you have to make a decision on how you will handle it before hand, not when you are in the emotional dilemma. Decide now that you will Never Never Never Quit.

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Keys to a positive marathon training season

Again, congratulations of becoming a member or staying a member of Fort Bend Fit, the jewel in the USA Fit system. It is a highly acclaimed training program. Follow it and you will finish your race.

Here are some keys to having a good, motivating, successful training season.

1--Be open, coachable, and teachable. Training may challenge some of your ideas about training, running, nutrition.

2--Run for a Reason

Find a cause/person for whom you may wish to dedicate your training and finishing your race. This will provide motivation to train during the week and to show up on Saturdays for long training runs.

3--Make another commitment. One that world-class athletes make. Commit yourself to becoming comfortable being uncomfortable. Last year we ran in high heat and humidity, rain, snow, wind, and otherwise torturous conditions. The Sugar Land USA Fit Marathon was run in 25 degree conditions. Start today and repeat this mantra, affirmation to yourself:

I commit to being comfortable being uncomfortable. Say this at least 10 times per day and you will feel the difference when you don't avoid the puddle and end up soaking your running shoes in 3 inch deep water!!!

4--Don't beat yourself up if you miss a Saturday run or a weekday run. Nobody likes a bully. It only erodes your self-esteem.

5--Only make self-to-self comparisons. Self-to-other comparisons are dangerous and may lead you to make a false assessment of your fitness level. Your are you only competitor. A positive attitude will result from making these self-to-self comparisons.

6--Begin to develop the Mindset of a Marthoner. The first step is to ask yourself: If I knew I would finish a marathon in January, what actions would I take today, next week, next month?
The answer would probably to follow the FBF Training schedule.

Lastly, remember the story of the professor telling his students to look to the left, look to the right and that only one of the three would end up becoming a lawyer. Well if you are in Fort Bend Fit you can look to your left, look to your right and say "See you at the finish line!!" You all will become marathon/half-marathon finishers!!!

Have a great season!!!