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The Mental Game Exposed
Memorial Day weekend, 2000. Dallas, Texas. It was the first ever U.S. Triathlon Olympic Trials. The triathlon was to debut in September at the Sydney Olympics. The distance was a 0.9 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, and 10 km run). Twenty-five women earned the right to race at the Trials based on their International Triathlon Union (ITU) ranking, where a top-125 ranking was needed. Two U.S. women would make the team in Dallas; one person had already been selected in April based off of a finish in a race of the same distance on the Olympic course. This was my one shot, since I did not receive an invite to the April race because my ITU rank was not high enough.
I was nervous, but not overly so. The pressure was on the other athletes who were ranked higher and had many more years of international racing experience. I was a veritable newbie with only a handful of international races under my belt. As a PhD student who’d turned professional just two years earlier, I didn’t have the time or luxury of globe-trotting. None of that mattered, though, when the gun went off. My competitive instincts took over. I knew what to do. I felt nothing but the desire to win. To push myself to whatever limits I had on the day.
I came out of the water in a group of thirteen women, sixty seconds behind the two lead women, Sheila Taormina and Barb Lindquist. The two in the front rode like they were in a perfectly practiced ballet. Their synchrony was in stark contrast to the pell-mell of our group of thirteen. We couldn’t get organized; indeed, it almost seemed like there was an intentional slowing down of our group to provide the front-runners with more of an advantage. By the time we hit the transition to the run, we were almost four minutes in arrears to Sheila and Barb.
Four minutes! That is essentially an eternity in triathlon parlance. Over a 6.2 mile run, that equates to roughly forty seconds per mile. Making up that amount of time is virtually unheard of at that level. When my feet hit the ground, I scrambled through the transition with those numbers floating through my head. I was angry. Angry that our group of thirteen could be so complacent. Angry that I was now racing for an alternate spot. Angry that my favorite hat had flown off within the first two minutes of the run and now the sun was relentlessly beating down on my head. I tried to ignore the oppressive heat and humidity and the fact that two days before the race I’d had to sit down on a park bench in the middle of a short, easy run due to dizziness from the Texas swelter.
I settled into a rhythm. I ran hard. I ran off my anger. Within two miles, I started hearing that Barb was faltering in the heat and that I had a sizable gap to the women behind me. Suddenly, the impossible became possible, as halfway through the run I was in second place, in contention for a coveted Olympic spot. All I had to do now was stay hydrated, stay calm, and not succumb to the heat and the excitement.
The homestretch was long and crowded with spectators who cheered for me as I made my way across the line. I raised my arms in jubilation. Years of training, injuries, dealing with asthma, and the complexities of being a student-athlete all came into focus. None of it mattered anymore. I was an Olympian. Sheila was waiting at the line. We embraced. No longer competitors, we were teammates.
Using the mental game to augment physical fitness
I’m often asked how much of my athletic success can be credited to my physical abilities and how much can be attributed to my mental makeup. Champions, as the familiar adage preaches, are not born—they’re made. And to a large degree that’s true. Reaching the top of any sport, or anything in life for that matter, takes years upon years of dedication and proper preparation. But if there’s a huge pool of individuals who have undertaken the same commitment to become the best at something, and each has undertaken similar steps toward that end, what truly separates the winners from everyone else?
There was a time when I used to believe that excellence was primarily based on putting in the work. Those who touched the wall first in a swimming race or broke the finish tape in a running or triathlon competition just trained harder than everyone else. There is no substitute, after all, for hard work. At least that’s the lesson that was continually drilled into my head during my formative years. At some point, though, as I continued to achieve higher and higher levels of success, it occurred to me that the prevailing wisdom was just plain wrong. What truly distinguishes the champions is their mental edge.
The Champion Mindset: An Athlete’s Guide to Mental Toughness is a much-needed and long-overdue look into how to program a competitor’s mind to achieve optimal success. Changing behaviors and ways of thinking are never easy, but the chapters in this book aim to simplify this process to make it manageable and achievable. This book will appeal to a wide array of athletes—from the weekend warrior, who wants nothing more than to complete his or her first 5 km running race or marathon, to those seeking to improve their personal records in the swimming pool or on the triathlon course, to those who dream of one day qualifying for the Ironman World Championship, and to those who have aspirations of one day becoming Olympians and World Champions.
Get with the program
The turning point, for me, came when I was fourteen. My fledgling athletic career, rocky from the start, had taken shape some seven years earlier in a San Diego swimming pool. My parents had joined a swim and racket club, and since they knew my baby sister and I would be spending a lot of time in and around the pool, they enrolled us in swim lessons so that we’d be water-safe. It wasn’t love at first dip for me—and I certainly wasn’t a natural, à la Missy Franklin, a multiple Olympic medalist. My initial efforts were clumsy: a bizarre collection of body contortions, uneven kicks, and desperate arm strokes. I was actually rejected on my first swim team tryout, relegated to further lessons. Gradually, though, I started to see improvement.
Anyway, that pivotal day when I was fourteen, our team traveled up to Mission Viejo to participate in one of the biggest meets of the summer. At some point in the seven years from the beginning of my swim career to that day in Mission Viejo, I’d become enamored with the adrenaline rush that comes from trying to do something as wondrously pure as racing across a swimming pool as quickly as possible. On this particular occasion, though, I seemed to be lugging around a dark cloud tethered to the shoulder straps on my swimsuit because my coach, Mr. Weckler, had taken it upon himself to sign me up for the 400 meter Individual Medley. I’d been moping about the development for days, because the 400 IM is one of those dreaded events that most levelheaded swimmers try to avoid. It’s so intimidating and grueling, in fact, that even Michael Phelps, the greatest 400 IMer in history, has been adamant in his refusal to add it back into his schedule no matter how many times he makes a comeback.
I wish I could say that my race that day proved to be an epiphany for me because I passed the arduous eight-lap test with flying colors. It would be nice to report that my performance was so stellar that I not only won the race but I had everyone in attendance on their feet as I basked in their ovation. The truth of the matter, though, was that I stunk up the joint. I swam poorly from the moment I hit the water and things only got worse from there. I finished the race in one piece, but just barely. Afterward, as I made my way up to Coach Weckler, my cheeks drenched with tears and my body racked in sobs, I blubbered that I hated the 400 IM and that I’d never swim it again for as long as I lived. My coach, never the warm and fuzzy type to begin with, went absolutely ballistic. I can still picture how his face flushed to a hue of red I’d never seen before and how a vein popped out of his forehead that resembled a grotesque worm. “I don’t want to hear this crap from you, Joanna!” he bellowed in front of my teammates, parents, and anyone else who was within earshot. “You had a bad swim. So what?! You’d better get with the program because some day the 400 IM is going to be your best event!”
Needless to say, it wasn’t quite the reaction I was looking for. I could feel myself shrinking to something smaller than that alien creature above his eyebrows as I furtively looked for somewhere, anywhere, to hide. I don’t know how I found the wherewithal to slink away, but I did. And at first, once I was alone and had finally regained my composure—partially, no doubt, because I realized there was no one around to witness my theatrics—I was mad as hell. I wasn’t angry because the coach had called me out like that. I was ticked off because I didn’t want to be a good 400 IMer. I mean, why couldn’t he have chewed me out for having swum a lousy 50 meter freestyle? Heck, I would have even toed the line over a crappy 100 meter butterfly!
As it turned out, of course, my coach was right—100 percent right. Four years later I qualified for my first of seven U.S. Olympic Team Trials in, you guessed it, the 400 IM—and that occasion marked the official launch of my elite athletic career.
Are you psyched up?
Does the mental game matter? As someone who’s been fortunate to have reached the very pinnacle of her sport, I can unequivocally say that proper mental preparation is usually the difference between success and failure. In hindsight, my 400 IM that day in Mission Viejo was doomed even before my family and I had arrived at the swim facility after our long commute. In swimmer lingo, I’d psyched myself out rather than getting psyched up. I’d sabotaged whatever chance I had for performing well because my head wasn’t in it. Michael Jordan didn’t become the greatest basketball player in history by accident. Soccer great Lionel Messi doesn’t score goals because he’s wishy-washy about his abilities. He excels because he’s convinced that every time he takes a shot the ball will wind up in the back of the net.
It’s one of those fundamental lessons that I find myself repeating to the athletes I coach, time and again as they approach their big competition. Stay positive. If you’re not entirely convinced that you will perform well, odds are you won’t. It’s as simple as that, and this book will explain why. Before you begin your journey of improved mental toughness, you can take my mental toughness quiz, which I dubbed the Sisu Survey (Sisu is the Finnish word for grit). You can use this quiz to determine your level of mental toughness as measured by eight separate mental toughness traits. You can access the quiz at sisu.racereadycoaching.com.
As I look back over the course of my own career, that moment—where I felt embarrassed in front of friends and family—was life-changing. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d reached a crossroads of sorts. As I sat by myself licking my wounds, I realized I was either going to learn from my mistake or I wasn’t. Essentially, I was being presented with the choice of either steering clear of the difficult challenges that lay ahead in my athletic career or of tackling them head-on.
But what exactly did Coach Weckler’s “get with the program” speech mean? For starters, it meant trusting my coach, trusting my training, and above all, trusting my abilities. He had seen something in me that I myself had overlooked. He could see that I was adaptable, gifted in my stroke versatility, and that I possessed an uncanny knack for endurance. He was also savvy enough to realize that I was someone who needed to be tested, continually, because he could tell that I had the resolve to persevere in the face of adversity.
I’m certainly not advocating that athletes need to be humiliated in order to perform to the best of their abilities. I didn’t know a thing about sports psychology at the time and, clearly, neither did my coach, whose tact and timing were about as dreadful as that 400 IM I’d swum. But had I not experienced that wake-up call when I was an insecure teenager—still trying to find her footing as a competitive athlete—nothing that transpired later in my career would have occurred. I never would have earned berths on Olympic and national teams. I never would have won a World Championship or set a world record. And I certainly never would have captured all those national and international wins.
The endurance sports explosion
Ours is a nation of overachievers. How else can one explain the explosive growth in endurance sports? When the New York City Marathon debuted in 1970, just 127 competitors were interested in seeing if they could run 26.2 miles. Today, over fifty thousand runners make the annual pilgrimage on race day and tens of thousands more are turned away because of field size constraints. When the inaugural Ironman Triathlon was unveiled in Hawaii in 1977, a mere fifteen competitors attempted the quirky swim/bike/run test of stamina. Today, Ironman has become a true global phenomenon and hundreds of thousands of athletes clamor for spots in dozens of sold-out races staged around the world.
Participation in running, swimming, cycling, triathlon, Spartan racing, mountain climbing, and other gut-busting activities has never been higher. Americans seem to seek out bigger tests of endurance each and every year and the numbers reflect that. USA Swimming and U.S. Masters Swimming have a combined membership in excess of 400,000. An estimated 46.6 million cyclists participated in various organized cycling events in 2013. Last year there were over 19 million finishers in U.S. running events (with a whopping 500,000 of those finishes coming in marathons). And in the sport of triathlon, 550,000 active members of USA Triathlon generate roughly 2 million race finishes per year.
Winning the mental game
There are countless books devoted to the physical side of endurance sports. Anyone Googling “How do I run a half marathon?” will be presented with dozens of strategies and training plans to get from the starting line to the finish line. Interested in triathlon? There are an equal number of books devoted to making your multisport adventure an enjoyable one.
This book’s approach, however, is different. The Champion Mindset: An Athlete’s Guide to Mental Toughness will not only be a compendium of my own personal journey from struggling novice swimmer to Olympian and World Champion, but it will offer a step-by-step guide to help athletes of all levels develop their own mental edge so they can achieve their athletic dreams. Among the topics that will be covered are proper goal setting, keeping it fun, building your team, intention in training, improving motivation, promoting self-confidence, mind/body cohesion, bringing it on race day, coping with setbacks, taking ownership of your career, and becoming a joyous athlete for life. These broad topics will be broken down and examined in detail, with tips and tricks to help athletes change their way of thinking so that when it’s their turn to shine, they will be ready.
A great many athletes know how to train their bodies. Far too few, as I’ve seen from personal experience, know how to properly train their minds. Many years of helping athletes of all ages and abilities has proven to me that with proper education and a little nudge, athletes are able to transform not just their physical game, but their mental one as well.
Endurance sports as a metaphor for life
Train the brain as well as the body. It may seem like a lot of bother for what is essentially a hobby. Perhaps. I have found, though, when my athletic life is harmonious, it spreads into all other facets of my life. Starting off the day with a good run allows me to focus better on my work, I am a more agreeable person to be around, and my sleep is sounder. And the rewards of a good workout are immediate, in the form of an endorphin high that can last all day.
Christian Taylor, an Olympic and World Champion gold medal–winning triple jumper from the U.S., explained his perspective on being a professional athlete and how it relates to life outside of athletics: “I recognize this life is not normal, but it is important to remember that one day this phase of my life will be over, so it is important to take away bits and pieces from the sport to take into the next chapter of my life. I treat track and field like my internship for my next life.”1 Taylor went even further by describing how sports readied him for life. “One day my track and field career will be over and I’ll have no real work experience either. Fortunately, I am responsible with money.… I had to make sacrifices, but the process was a good life lesson for me.”2
It is said that participation in endurance sports is a selfish endeavor. Athletes are often made to feel guilty for their training regimens and commitment to racing. Cat Morrison, a multiple duathlon World Champion, hit the nail on the head when she said, “Being an athlete, especially in an individual sport can be a selfish pursuit. However, it does not mean that you have to be personally selfish. In my own journey I have always believed that the help and support that I received and demanded of others by necessity required that I gave of my time and abilities towards others.”3
With the obesity epidemic sweeping the globe, endurance sports is a healthier alternative to watching TV or playing on the computer. The key is balance and moderation by not allowing sports participation to overrule work and family. The benefits of endurance sports participation—goal setting, dedication, perseverance, pain management, focus, and improved well-being—mostly outweigh the potential selfishness. It is a fine line between turning your passion for endurance sports into an obsession that can become so all-encompassing it overtakes your life. But I would venture to say that the most successful athletes realize when they’ve taken their enthusiasm too far and back down before it causes ruination.
It turns out that individuals who participate in endurance sports are more successful than their non-athletic counterparts, manifested in an income almost double that of the general population; that works out to a hefty sum. The average U.S. household income in 2014 was $72,641. Compare that to the average household income of triathletes ($126,000) and participants in the NYC Marathon ($130,000).4 Endurance athletes know how to achieve success because it is something they practice every day. The very traits that propel endurance athletes forward on the playing field transfer to all realms of life. It is not a coincidence that CEOs of major corporations participate in Ironman triathlons and marathons. Forbes magazine recognized this very notion and published an article that stated triathlon and executive leadership both require “three core key competencies: setting a vision, developing strategy, and managing accountability.”5
The endorphin fix
Among the long list of the benefits of sports and exercise are the opportunity to test oneself on a regular basis, improved health, a social outlet, a general sense of well-being, goal setting, and improvement in self-esteem. I would be remiss to omit endorphins from this inventory. Indeed, an endorphin surge might even top the list, at least for me.
Endorphins are endogenous neuropeptides produced by the central nervous system and pituitary gland.6 Endogenous means they are produced naturally by the body. Naturally! You don’t have to buy them or take them in a pill or make some kind of endorphin smoothie.
Apparently there are at least twenty types of endorphins, a fact that I just recently found out. I erroneously thought there was just a single type of endorphin. No wonder they are so awesome, there are a ton of different kinds. Well, that and the fact that endorphins interact with the opiate receptors in the brain, acting in a similar manner to narcotics such as morphine and codeine. This means that endorphins can reduce our perception of pain. The release of endorphins can also give athletes a feeling of euphoria (e.g., runner’s high), decrease appetite, reduce anxiety, and increase the immune response.
Just writing this makes me want to go out and get some endorphins, don’t you? That begs the question, since you can’t buy them in a store, how does one even get endorphins? A 2015 study suggests that endorphins and the concomitant runner’s high arise from leptin, a fat hormone, whereby a decrease in leptin levels increases motivation for physical activity and food.7 Yet another study suggested that perhaps it is the presence of endocannabinoids that create the runner’s high.8 Whatever the actual substance is that makes us feel good after exercise is less important than the fact that exercise makes us feel good.
Lots of studies have tried to determine the intensity or duration with which one must exercise to get an endorphin release, but the results are inconsistent and conflicting. Adding to the complexity of this issue is that some people just naturally have more endorphins than others.
My take on the situation is that everybody has a personal threshold for where they get a release of endorphins and each person’s subjective response to how the endorphins feel is different. Just like some people enjoy a good buzz from a few drinks of alcohol while others do not. I personally rather like a good endorphin surge, and that may be the route of my self-proclaimed exercise addiction. Simon Lessing, Olympian and multiple World Champion in triathlon pointed out the potential pitfall with endorphins: “Common sense should prevail, but unfortunately, with endorphins, common sense goes out the window for most people.”9
With all of this in mind, I decided to create an endorphin scale, which I hereby dub the EFG (Exercise Feels Good) Scale. Each activity yields a different level of endorphin release that varies from person to person. I think the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), a measurement tool used to assess a characteristic or attitude across a continuum (think of the pain scale at the doctor’s office), can determine how many endorphins a bout of exercise is worth.
Here is an example of how the EFG Scale would work:
1. What exercise did you do?
2. How long did the bout of exercise last?
3. How intense was the exercise (mild, moderate, hard)?
4. Rate on the scale: How good did the exercise make you feel?
With this method you can determine your personal EFG Quotient (i.e., the number of EFG points needed for you to feel good). The first three questions are really meant to set the stage for you to determine the intensity and duration along with the activity that gives you the most EFG points.
I came up with the scale after having surgery in 2015. At that time, I was relegated to mostly walking. I hate walking. For me, walking has a very low EFG Quotient. Like, really low.
Let’s take a look at a typical post-surgical day:
1. What exercise did you do? Walking
2. How long did the bout of exercise last? 60 minutes
3. How intense was the exercise (mild, moderate, hard)? Mild
4. Rate on the scale: How good did the exercise make you feel? 2
After surgery, I took two walks per day, which gave me four points on the EFG Scale each day. Normally, I run or swim at a moderate to high intensity, which can give me anywhere from five to ten EFG points, and I do one or two sessions each day. I don’t ever complete two sessions of ten EFG points in a single day, so I would say that my normal daily total is roughly five to fifteen EFG points.
You can see, then, that recovery from surgery left me with a huge EFG point deficit. I tried very hard not to recoup these lost EFG points by doing crazy training once I was healed. And, since endorphins can have an analgesic effect and reduce depression and anxiety, it behooved me to get back to running to increase my endorphin load. But, I can unequivocally say that my daily four EFG points was better than zero EFG points, and those four meager points greatly facilitated my recovery.
As a matter of fact, as someone who has dealt with chronic pain for over six years, EFG points were my salvation. They enhanced my mood, even in the darkest of days, and decreased my need for narcotics.
You can use this handy tool to determine your daily EFG points. Track your points and see how they correlate with your mood, your desire to train, your productivity, your health, or how it augments your mental game in pursuit of your goals. Don’t be surprised if there is a positive correlation between them. If you find yourself in a snit, or if you have a propensity for depression or anxiety, or if you have some pain, go out and generate some EFG points, as they are bound to make you feel better.
Understand your potential
Not everyone can become a champion. I knew from a young age that I would not be the next Mary T. Meagher; Janet Evans procured that honor. It wasn’t pessimism that led me to that realization, it was realism. I also knew that even with all of my triathlon wins, I would not be the next Paula Newby-Fraser. My potential took me further than I could have imagined, but it did not propel me to legendary status.
Each of us has a ceiling, a limit in our ability to improve, meaning our potential is as individualized as our fingerprint. The theory of deliberate practice indicates that specific forms of practice are necessary to attain expertise, and that a minimum of ten years is needed, and furthermore the deliberate practice supersedes innate talent.10 This notion was made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, where he explains the concept that ten thousand hours of practice is the key to reaching ultimate success.
My doctorate is in genetic epidemiology, the study of the interplay of genes and environment in complex traits. My background in genetics leads me to believe that the ten thousand hours theory is missing a key component—the role of our genes. David Epstein reviews the role of genetics succinctly in his book, The Sports Gene.
Studies have identified the ACE gene, which plays a role in swimming, with one gene variant more common in long-distance swimmers and another variant of the gene more common in sprinters.11 If you’ve ever been frustrated that you are not progressing in your sport as quickly as your peers, that too might be genetic. Epstein described the HERITAGE study, which found twenty-one gene variants that play a role in exercise genetics. These variants help determine whether a person will respond to a training program or not, meaning that even with a strict training regimen, some people just don’t seem to improve their aerobic capacity.12 Further studies have shown that response to exercise does vary among individuals, but everyone will respond eventually; it is a matter of training for a long enough period of time (the study lasted six months) and going hard enough.13
Without innate talent, ten thousand hours of practice will not get you to the top; and without hours and hours of practice, innate talent is generally not enough. It is the combination of your genes, the ability to work hard, and of course, a finely tuned mental game that will allow an athlete to realize their potential. Shalane Flanagan, Olympic bronze medalist in the 5,000 meter, 2-time Olympian in the marathon, and American record holder in the 3 km, 5 km, 10 km, and 15 km, hit the genetic jackpot. Her mother held the world record in the marathon, and her father was an accomplished runner. Shalane is also known for her relentless work ethic. She has that wondrous combination of stellar genes augmented by more than ten thousand hours of hard work; this duality helped propel her to a sixth-place finish in the marathon at the Rio Olympics.
I suppose, then, I should blame my parents that I never became the next Paula Newby-Fraser, eight-time Ironman World Champion, because I definitely put in my ten thousand hours. Truly, though, my athletic ceiling was dictated not by my ability to put in the work, but by many of my innate shortcomings: asthma, a finicky gut that always had me searching out bathrooms during long-distance races, and a ridiculous propensity for dizziness that caused me to pass out or required me to lie down on the race course to prevent passing out. It is up to you to determine your potential, through your training and racing, so you are not disappointed by reaching for something that is not physically possible. Do not fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others, as their potential just might be genetically extraordinary.
Desire and perseverance
I think we can all agree that endorphins rock. But, are they enough? Probably not. Desire is another piece of the equation. Even with plenty of endorphins, if desire is low, you won’t even seek out the endorphins. Desire is what put Julie Moss and Ironman on the map. In 1982, Julie was leading the grueling event in Kona, Hawaii, which consisted of a 1.2 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. With less than one mile to go, Julie started staggering until she collapsed. She picked herself up, yet collapsed again. Only yards from the finish, she finally crawled her way to the line, eventually finishing second after getting passed while she was on the ground. Desire is what compelled Kim Smith, a three-time Olympian in running for New Zealand, to continue to run eighty miles a week with a ruptured tibialis posterior tendon, a very painful leg injury.14 Desire is what caused me to race until I passed out at the Boulder 70.3 and the Hy-Vee triathlon and triggered my collapse at the finish line at 80 percent of the endurance events I’ve done over the years.
Most people do not have that type of desire. Ultimately, the type of desire that causes you to keep going until you can’t isn’t necessary, isn’t safe, and probably cannot be taught anyway. Desire, it turns out, is partially innate, in our genes. In his book The Sports Gene, David Epstein describes the story of Lance Mackey and his Alaskan huskies and Mackey’s quest to win the Iditarod, a sled-dog race from Anchorage to Nome. Financial constraints led Mackey to breed huskies that were not the fastest but had the most desire; his dogs would “trot until they bored a hole in the earth.”15 You are probably thinking to yourself, “Nice story, but how does this relate to humans?” Well, it turns out that twin studies, the classical way of examining complex behaviors in humans, have shown that exercise behavior is 60 percent attributed to our genes.16 That’s a lot.
The mere fact that you are reading this book indicates that you have desire—desire to develop your mental game in an effort to improve your performance. It is that desire that will get you out the door to train in inclement weather or darkness or when you just aren’t in the mood. Desire will allow you to finish your race when your body starts to ache. Eschewing a late night out due to an early morning training session can also be chalked up to desire.
Milk and cookies. Peanut butter and jelly. Holmes and Watson. Desire and perseverance. What do these four combinations have in common? They fit together like puzzle pieces. Desire needs perseverance for success. Jan Frodeno, 2008 triathlon Olympic gold medalist and 2015 Ironman 70.3 World Champion, had this to say after winning the 2015 Ironman World Championships in Kona: “It’s never actually fun out there.… it’s all about perseverance. The race unfolded not at all how I thought it would.”17
I have powerful desire, but my athletic career has been defined by perseverance. I have dealt with injuries, ostracism, juggling training with academics, and of course the innate physical shortcomings mentioned earlier.
Nothing, though, has characterized my ability to persevere more than the aftermath of the 2009 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, FL. In 2008, I won the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in world record time. I started the 2009 race fitter and with more confidence than the previous year. I felt that nothing could stop me. I was very wrong. At mile 45 of the 56 mile bike section, I had an impressive, life-altering, career-ending bike crash. It happened at an aid station when the volunteer did not let go of the water bottle I was grabbing. Rather than a traditionally smooth handoff, I was rudely yanked from my bike. I flipped over the front end of my bike and hit the pavement hard. The pavement won that battle. I instantly knew that I’d broken my collarbone and several ribs. The policeman standing there was no help at all; he kept saying to me, “You’re okay, right?” I kept telling him no as I shouted about a hundred expletives; I might have even made up a few words. I somehow managed to get myself and my bike to the sidewalk and out of the way of the oncoming racers. In case you were wondering, my bike was unscathed and only needed new handlebar tape.
My collarbone was surgically repaired a couple of days later. My ribs, somehow, never healed. I raced throughout the 2010 season, albeit unsuccessfully. I dropped out of almost every race I started due to rib pain, eventually calling it a career in August of 2010. From that fateful moment in 2009 until 2016, I endured chronic pain. Over that period of time I required six surgeries performed by four different surgeons to repair the extensive damage to my rib cage. Finding answers to the problems was perplexing for two reasons, the first being that imaging such as MRI, diagnostic ultrasound, and X-ray did not disclose any abnormalities and the second being that prolonged rib pain is rare because most traumatic rib injuries heal on their own. The search for surgeons willing and able to perform these surgeries was arduous, and many turned me down as they did not want to perform exploratory surgery on an otherwise healthy person. In fact, I needed four surgeons because none of them were willing to do repeat operations (until the very end, when I had my fifth and sixth surgeries performed by surgeon number four).
My first surgery was in August of 2012 when part of my eleventh rib was removed due to a fracture that never healed and a neuroma (a thickening of tissue around a nerve) was excised. In 2014, two titanium plates were fixed to ribs seven through nine to stabilize a fracture on my eighth rib. At that time, they removed my xiphoid process (a piece of cartilage at the tip of the sternum), which was displaced and stuck in my abdominal muscle. Then, in May 2015, the titanium plates were taken out because they became a hindrance to my breathing. Thankfully the eighth rib healed up. My travail was not over, though.
The worst of the pain occurred in the summer of 2015 when I was incapacitated by something called intercostal neuralgia, pain stemming from the nerves that run between the ribs. I’d had this disorder since a few months after the accident, but in the summer of 2015 it took on a whole new life. It is pesky, hard to treat, and can render sufferers incapacitated. This type of neuralgia generally affects more than one intercostal nerve, and in my case I had five nerves involved (ribs eight through twelve).
The neuralgia hurt all day, every day, infiltrating every facet of my life. The ongoing pain affected my ability to sleep, work, and train. It was constant and unrelenting. I had pain that wrapped around my rib cage, like tentacles squeezing me tight. I had stabbing pain in my side, analogous to the worst side stitch ever. I had pain in my back that caused constant nausea and occasional vomiting. I had relentless spasms in my upper abdominal muscles. Some days I felt like my head might explode due to the pain. It was hard to reconcile that a body that was once so fit and willing to do my bidding now malfunctioned so unremittingly.
Unlike a muscle injury that resolves with rest or ultrasound or manual therapies, intercostal neuralgia does not respond to and is often made worse by such conventional treatments. Maintaining some modicum of physical activity alleviated my symptoms better than anything I tried. Perhaps it was the endorphins, or maybe just the distraction. Either way, some form of movement helped.
That summer I had over two dozen injections, including localized shots of cortisone, nerve blocks, and nerve ablations (under X-ray guidance large needles with an electrode are used to create an electrical current with the intent of interrupting nerve conduction) to try to alleviate the pain. None of it worked. Doctors wanted to put me on high doses of narcotics and nerve pain medications with noxious side effects. They became frustrated when I refused to poison my body with medications that were unlikely to help.
The unrelenting pain with no abatement in the foreseeable future was disheartening to say the least. My life was indescribably altered. I tried hard to focus on what I could do (such as having the time and ability to write this book) and not on those things that I love but had to forgo, such as triathlon, running races, and sleeping soundly. I allowed myself to cry on those occasions when the pain and frustration reached unimaginable levels. There were days that I contemplated ending it all, as I could not envision living another day with so much suffering. Ultimately, my absolute conviction that something was wrong and could possibly be fixed, along with my desire to find that solution and with the support of my family, kept me going.
The search for resolution culminated in what was my fourth surgery, in September 2015. I met with a new thoracic surgeon who, upon listening to my history and performing a thorough physical exam, agreed that a surgical intervention was the only answer. The surgeon found a hot mess. My twelfth rib was clicking, due to an unhealed fracture. He removed six centimeters from that rib. He found a neuroma, so he excised it. There was a ton of scar tissue around my eleventh rib with some nerves caught up in it. He removed about four centimeters from my eleventh rib to help him eliminate the scar tissue and free up the nerves, which he buried under muscle to prevent further damage to the nerves. Most important, he did not need to remove the entire ribs, preserving the attachment to the spine and sparing muscle damage in my back. My lung got nicked during the surgery, so I ended up with a chest tube.
You may be wondering why I ended up with so many fractures that never healed. Each fracture was in the cartilaginous part of the rib. Cartilage fractures of the ribs do not heal and are nearly impossible to visualize on standard imaging.
At this point, I will never be a torso model. I have so many scars on my abdomen it looks like medical students used me as their cadaver. But who cares, because each surgery fixed an anatomical abnormality that alleviated pain. I adopted a new philosophy. If I can’t run fast, then run slowly. If I can’t run slowly, then walk. No matter what, keep moving.
In the seven days after the September 2015 surgery I walked fifty-one miles, and then I began to slowly run. Incredibly, two weeks after that surgery, I did a tempo run workout with my group. It wasn’t fast by any means, but I accomplished the run without the pain I’d experienced beforehand. My coach, Darren, said to me, “You are different from most people. You want it badly. Most people are content to sit on the couch.” Yes, my desire runs deep and infiltrates every facet of my life, whether it is trying to qualify for the Olympics, excelling in my work, finding a solution to the pain, or coming back from surgery.
Even with all of the pain and dysfunction since the accident, I managed to maintain a successful running career as a masters runner (over forty). In 2011, I qualified for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials by running 2:43:09 at the California International Marathon, which was well under the standard of 2:46:00. I won a Cross Country National Championship in 2012. In 2014, I narrowly missed the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials standard en route to winning the Shamrock Marathon. Later that year, I broke the Colorado 40–44 age group record for the half marathon, and I placed second at the Masters Marathon National Championships in the Twin Cities Marathon, a mere two days before I had the second of my six rib surgeries.
I’ve listed some of the highlights of my racing during the period after triathlon, but I also had several disappointments. I dropped out of numerous races due to pain. I missed weeks of running and months of swimming and I stopped riding my bike altogether. Desire and perseverance kept me afloat during that tumultuous time; I applied the champion mindset that I used to win races all over the globe to dealing with chronic pain. I used my arsenal of tricks, many of which I am sharing with you in this book, to continue to compete both in life and on the proverbial playing field.
Rather than giving up on my athletic dreams, I continued to press on, setting goals for myself and training as hard as my body allowed, all the while understanding that there would be setbacks along the way, but realizing that misses are okay, because trying is always better than cowering in fear. Even with an abundance of desire and a propensity for perseverance, sometimes things just do not pan out, and comprehending this notion that success is not guaranteed no matter how hard we try is a big step in the right direction of winning the mental game.
Unlocking the mind
You might find this crazy, but I wrote seventy-five percent of my doctoral dissertation while I was in Sydney preparing for the Olympics. Many of the ideas in this book were born during a run. When the cursor on my screen flashes incessantly and my fingers cannot type because my brain is unwilling to release an idea, I go for a run to reset. Racking up the EFG points just makes it easier to concentrate and sit for long periods of time.
Not only does exercise free up your mind for a more productive work life, it also can improve your brain health. Exercise decreases the cognitive decline and loss of functional brain health inherent in aging populations.18 That’s really good news if you are already exercising because you just need to maintain your desire and endorphin flow so you continue to exercise until you are like ninety-two-year-old Harriette Thompson who finished the Rock ’n’ Roll San Diego Marathon in 2015 in a time of 7:24. If you aren’t convinced about the benefits of exercise on brain health, a very promising study showed that treadmill running can reverse the cognitive declines seen from early and late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.19 Granted, this was a mouse study, but many of the great scientific breakthroughs in humans started with mouse models.
Tips for a Mental Makeover
What is mental toughness? This concept is bandied about in the sports world, often used recklessly. Is it mentally tough to forge through a race injured, bleeding, or puking? Or, is it mentally tough to train while sick or when the weather is poor? Perhaps this is merely bad decision-making, something I have fallen prey to in the name of “mental toughness.” I think that the construct of mental toughness is overused philosophically and underused in practice. Mostly this is because mental toughness is generally misinterpreted, rendering true mental toughness hard to find. Mental toughness is not any one thing. It is an amalgamation of so many different things, and that is why it is hard to truly define and achieve it. But mastering at least some of these aspects of mental toughness will undoubtedly make you a better athlete.
• Mental toughness is the ability to toe the line at a race, and no matter which athletes show up, not letting them affect you or ruin your game plan.
• Mental toughness is racing to your potential whether you are first, thirty-first, or last.
• Mental toughness is looking at your workouts for the week with a small amount of fear and a large amount of excitement at the challenge set forth.
• Mental toughness is putting aside the chaos of life for a designated amount of time each day to properly execute your training.
• Mental toughness is doing the little things that make a big difference.
• Mental toughness is finding that last ounce of energy to keep going until the finish line when your body wants to quit.
• Mental toughness is going back for more even if you’ve been disappointed or embarrassed.
• Mental toughness is taking adversity and turning it into an advantage.
• Mental toughness is not being a lemming and just doing whatever everyone else is doing.
• Mental toughness is having self-confidence and not self-doubt.
• Mental toughness is savoring the small victories and knowing they will lead to larger ones down the road.
• Mental toughness is having trust in yourself, your coach, and your advisors to lead you down the right path.
• Mental toughness is learning how to focus.
• Mental toughness is taking pride in your effort.
• Mental toughness is making smart decisions with your head and avoiding poor decisions made from your heart.
• Mental toughness is not giving up because it is too hard.
• Mental toughness is sharing with others what you have learned.
• Mental toughness is being gracious whether you win or lose.
Copyright © 2017 by Joanna Zeiger