How To Deal With Setbacks During Your Race

Have you ever entered a race where things have gone wrong and you didn’t know how to cope with it in the moment? Maybe you fell off the pace group you planned to stick with, you might have missed an aid station, or maybe your watch malfunctioned. There are many moments in a race which you cannot control, and when things like this go wrong, they can negatively impact our mindset for the race whether it happens before or during the performance itself.

By the end of this blog 

• You will be able to set process and open goals that focus you on what you have to do, and reduce the experience of performance related pressure
• You will increase focus on what you can control
• Identify potential pitfalls and how you plan to respond
• Use self-talk statements to get you through tough times
• Reflect on your performances and plan how to improve from your setbacks

Our mind tends to highlight these negative moments, pulling our attention and causing us to dwell on the mishap, whilst also throwing up many ‘what-if’ scenarios. These  ‘what-ifs’ are often related to the potential negative consequences of these setbacks. Thoughts such as “I won’t reach my goal because the pacers have dropped me”, “I am going to fall apart now because I didn’t get an energy gel at that station” or “I don’t like running without music, what am I going to do?” tend to arise. We tend to focus on these thoughts,  which takes our mind off our performance, rather than focusing on what we have to do to get the best performance out of ourselves. However, there are strategies we can draw upon before, during and after a race that will allow us to respond effectively to these setbacks when they arise.

Before the race

Goal setting

The goals we set ourselves can be very important to provide a motivational foundation for training and competing. However, many of us focus on the outcome goal we want to achieve (e.g. I want to run sub 3hr30min in my next marathon). Then we go through a big block of training, with our focus at all times being on running under a specific time.

However, this overt focus on the outcome can actually increase the performance pressure we experience leading in to a race, reduce our race-day adaptability, and does not provide a full evaluation for how we may have raced or dealt with conditions on race day.

Having an outcome goal is great, however leading into a race we need to identify the processes, or actions we have to take, to allow us to achieve our goals. These are known as process goals. Examples of process goals might be “focus on one mile at a time” and “run hard on the uphill sections”. Processes give us something to focus on and reduce performance pressure we may be experiencing.

Taking this further, setting open goals has also been shown to reduce the performance pressure we face. Examples of open goals are “see how fast I can run the second half of this race compared to the first” or during a race “let’s see how many people I can catch when I push the pace on the uphill sections”.

Control the controllables

 There are so many things that are out of our control on race day. You cannot control everything. Things like your competitors, weather conditions, course profile, aid stations, and negative spontaneous thoughts and emotions are all out of your control. When something goes wrong in these areas, by focusing on it, we are actually distracting ourselves from out performance.

Identify what you can control and how it will best serve you on race day. Things like your effort levels, your attention, your self-talk, your responses to your emotions, the choice to carry back-up nutrition are all in your control.

If…Then Plans

Many of us do not want to think about potential setbacks or negatives which may occur during a race. The idea that we just have to ‘think positive’ and everything will be ok can actually hinder our performance and reduce our adaptability to potential setbacks.

By identifying, ahead of time, what potential pitfalls may occur, and how we will respond, we can actually increase the likelihood of a successful response to these setbacks. If…then plans are one such way to do this. An example of an If…then plan looks like this:

If I fall off the pace group….Then I will tell myself to focus on maintaining a steady effort level

Or

If I experience the thought of wanting to slow down…Then I will talk to myself, and tell myself to keep pushing, keep working.

During the race

Self-talk

Self-talk statements are the things we say to ourselves internally or out loud. They can focus our attention, enhance motivation, help us regulate our emotions, and boost confidence. When we are experiencing fatigue and high levels of perceived effort during a race, we can sometimes dwell on this uncomfortable sensations and thoughts of wanting to slow down.

However, by using self-talk, we can effectively respond to these unhelpful thoughts by refocusing on our performance and motivating ourselves to keep going. Self-talk has been shown to reduce the rate of perceived exertion we are experiencing, and allows endurance athletes to extend their time to exertion and maintain their goal pace for a longer time.

Remember, when the race gets harder, you will experience unhelpful thoughts and emotions, it is how you respond that matter. So, develop and use helpful self-talk statements for when setbacks arise. Self-talk can be whole statements, or short, sharp and specific words to focus your mind on the task at hand.

After the race

Reflection

Through reflection we can increase our self-awareness around what we are thinking and doing when things are going well, and when things are going badly, through this development of self-awareness, we can then identify areas for improvement going forward.

Examples might look like this “I was telling myself I can’t keep going and I slowed down, next time I will tell myself to keep pushing and keep working to see if that helps” or “I noticed that when I focused on catching the runner that was 2 places ahead of me, I was able to increase my pace and deal with the discomfort that came with that”.

So, after every race, ask yourself:

• What went well?
• What could have gone better?
• What will I work on to improve for the next race?

 Written by our Sport Psychology Consultants; Clare McDonald Noonan (MSc) & Shane Noonan (MSc)