Psychology of endurance sports - microgoalling

There is a big difference in running the, for example, Boston marathon and the marathon part of the Ironman in Nice, France. The former is a point to point race while the latter is a 4 x 10.25 km course. If we take out the swim and bike portion out of the equation, running a multi loop race is, generally, easier than running a point to point race.

You can divide your efforts into smaller parts and tick them off one by one while it’s more mentally draining to tackle a distance all at once.

That’s the principal of microgoalling and the topic that we will dive into today.

Microgoalling

There is this famous question of “How do you eat an elephant?”. The answer is surprisingly simple and entertaining - one bite at a time.

The key to a great performance is to take away the big picture and focus on the smaller pieces that will lead an athlete to an overall goal.

These can be distance oriented (the kilometer/mile markings on a road race), time oriented (the athlete aims to reach a certain point of the race in a fixed amount of time), or race oriented (certain checkpoints have to be reached from where the race continues to the next one).

To be able to do that, it’s important that the athlete and their team familiarise themselves with the course and identify checkpoints to define stages of the race.

If possible, athlete should cross the course as part of their training to (1) get comfortable with the course and know that they can endure the elements and (2) create a detailed plan for how to tackle the distance based on various environmental factors.

All of these things will enable the athlete to increase their confidence and get into a positive state of mind on race day.

Create tangible goals

Most of the races are against time and athletes base their goals on covering certain distances in a give amount of time. However, if those distances are quite long it can be beneficial to create different micro goals.

Staying close to the athlete in front or making sure to eat and drink a certain amount can be great goals to keep the head busy while the body is hurting.

Keep looking ahead

There will be times when things get tough and athletes struggle to hold a certain pace. They need to allow themselves to slow down, recover as much as they can and reset their focus anew.

Until humans develop a time machine, we can only change future outcomes and that’s why it’s important to always focus on what is in front of you.

By breaking up a distance into smaller chunks, distances become easier to cover. Once things get tough, creating tangible goals that can be achieved during an event athletes are able to reset their focus on continue.