If you've done the IronMan 140.6 distance already, there is absolutely no chance that at some point in the race you were not close to breaking apart. Or you're fucking Jan Frodeno. It happened to me on the two IronMan 140.6 distances I've done, and approximately at the same time when I was entering the fifth hour. It's an incredibly hard situation to deal with as your body is starting to fatigue, and your mind is knowing that you're not quite close to the end. So you start to think about sacrifice; it's human nature. At Challenge Almere-Amsterdam it was first talking to me with some thoughts like « You're starting to losing it, Sasha. Just don't, please. » Then a few minutes later came the inevitable « Why the fuck did you need to do that again. You know that I'm done, just stop pedalling and sit down on the grass; it's such a beautiful endless summer day. Anyway who cares at the end ? You already achieved more than 99% of people. » This lasted for 20 minutes or so, and it was a hard-fought battle, but as the greatest marathon runner, Eliud Kipchoge, said once : « If you want to break through, your mind should be able to control your body. Your mind should be part of your fitness. »
The moment you can sit up after one hour straight in aero position at Challenge Almere-Amstermdam is such a relief for the mind.
I’m totally convinced that like any ability, mental strength can be trained. But working on it is not like making progress in the pool where you can have anyone seeing if you’re doing it right. As for now no one can read your mind, and what's going on up there. So if you’re lacking mental toughness, it’s maybe the hardest part of an IronMan 140.6 training to address as it’s you against yourself at the end of the day.
I’m lucky enough to say that mental strength is my thing. Since I was a kid, I have been driven by competition at all stages of my life. I’m an awfully bad loser — I actually lost a really good friend at Monopoly — and I always wanted to be the best in every field that really mattered to me. When I’m in that spot, I can’t do anything else than focus 100 per cent of my energy for it. Spending let’s say 75% of it would just make me sick, because I wouldn’t satisfy my obsession for it. Pointless to say that everything in your life suffers for it, my closest relatives could testify, but that’s it.
This is kind of weird because my family is not cursed by this obsessive winning addiction, I'm really the only one thinking that way, and even though i’m getting older, it’s absolutely not getting any better. This might be a flaw in daily life, as you have to accept compromise from time to time, but I discovered how much of a quality it can be when you get into endurance sports.
Knowing this, how can I help on this topic ? It’s difficult because we’re all the product of our environment, but to start I could share with you some of my mindset in various situations :
- The marathon kid. Training for my open marathon, I was used to going to one of the big parks in Paris. On one of my Sunday long runs, which included intervals, I passed two young guys of around 18 years of age. One of the two wasn't really pleased and overtook me again a few hundred metres later. I was finishing my interval, and shouldn't have tried to keep up with his pace. I ran more than 3 kilometres along with him before blowing up and ruining my long run. A few weeks later that situation kind of happened again as I got passed by a time trial bike while riding. This time I behaved and let him go.
- The #SUB10 cap. The French brand Z3r0d released a pretty cool cap with #SUB10 written on it, and I guess they haven't it for the money regarding the few athletes it might concern. Never mind, I bought it I think around May 2019, so basically 6 months before actually breaking that time barrier. I swear to God that for that whole time, I never ever put it on my head. The cap was sitting in front of my TV and was always in sight whenever I was training on the home trainer. I was looking at it whenever I was really struggling with the workout, helping me to remember what I was chasing. You just can't imagine the emotion it was to wear it for the first time, and I'm still wearing it at least once a week.
- Your Wi-Fi, seriously ? When I realized that a potential #SUB10 was a thing, my mind completely shifted toward that objective. To such an extent that I actually renamed my Wi-Fi name to #SUB10. Yep. Seriously.
- It’s burning out there. I already discussed that story in my #SUB10 journey chapter, so I will keep it short here but burning my foot only a few weeks before my race was the most difficult adverse circumstance I ever had to face. I now understand that you have to be stubborn to oblivion to get back on the bike only 5 days later, with the skin in pieces, risking a bacterial infection because of the heat and humidity of the summer, not to mention the possibility of crashing. Still, I grit my teeth and made the effort.
The #SUB10 cap in front of me to remind me the reason I’m suffering for.
These are just some examples I can easily remember, but looking back I surely could find tons of others. You get my general daily life mood, but there are a few other points that I found really important and that are still worthy of their own sub chapters.
Acknowledge that you’re tired, then move your thought process away from that.
— Jim Vance
Embrace the pain
« You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs » is a well-known French proverb, and can totally be applied to any IronMan preparation. In order to make fitness progress — like real fitness progress — your mind has to accept that it will be costly for your body. That cost is coming obviously from the strong training load stimulus inflicted on your body during some several weekly key sessions, but also from the fatigue generated over the training block length.
This is absolutely inevitable and mandatory if you want to be able to cope with the race effort needed for a #SUB10 performance. When you’ll be out there chasing the time, it won’t stop just because you need a five-minute break on the bike or a to walk down the marathon for two kilometers. No, the clock will keep ticking, and you will eventually fail if you’re not prepared to take over the control of your body and forcing it to fucking keep doing its job. « Mind is everything. Muscle — just pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind. » declared distance runner Paavo ‘Flying Finn’ Nurmi and winner of nine Olympic gold medals.
That mindset — or mental toughness — can only be built by doing the thing that is hard over and over again, especially when you don’t feel like doing it. So basically, in training. On your down days, when you are not feeling your best, you have to learn to embrace the pain, the discomfort and difficulties. Open your arms and just say « I’m here, please take me ». I was close to crying — really — on multiple occasions on my home trainer while doing some hard-fought intervals. In these most adverse circumstances, I surely made fitness progress, but not as much as on the mental toughness side. It really taught me to remain positive and proactive, and to accept that at some point it’s going to be a difficult challenge to face.
A few months ago, I watched a video about American triathlete Ben Keanute running with his coach Jim Vance following him on a bike. You can clearly see him grimacing and trying to keep up with the required running pace, and then hearing Jim Vance shouting to him : « Acknowledge that you're tired, then move your thought process away from that. » That was it. In a sentence he got the whole point, and that’s surely the reason he’s one of the best long-endurance coaches out there.
Talk to yourself
I'm not your average Joe. I'm single for years now — as a choice — and had to learn to deal with me, myself and I most of the time. I'm not calling my friend, my family when things are going wrong. I actually talk to myself a lot in these kind of cases, and even though I might sound like someone who is probably a bit nuts — which I am — it was an incredible help in jumping into long-endurance distances where loneliness is playing a big part.
I understand that is a pretty unique mindset compared to the vast majority of people, and I would surely not push you into something like this. But being able to isolate yourself from any external factor that may happen during a race is one of the main reason some people succeed and some others don't. I genuinely think that a race day relies 90% on mental and 10% on physical. I mean you trained hard to be on the start line; you are ready. Now it's all about how you'll deal with your race strategy more importantly, for the unexpected. An IronMan 140.6, lasting for hours, will never go according to plan. The perfect race is a pipe dream : you might be hit accidentally by another athlete in the water, get a solid leg cramp getting out to the first transition, having any possible mechanical issue on the bike, or experiencing a digestive system problem on the run. « Anything is possible » isn't it ? So when something like this will inevitably happen, you must be able to keep your shit together. I repeat : you must be able to keep your shit together. You should think about how to get back on track the most efficient way possible instead of overthinking about the outcome of your race. It's straight pointless, crying on your situation will just worsen the whole situation. That's where being able to talk to yourself can be key.
When your crossing the finish line and can finally let your mind slip away is one of the very unique moment you’ll ever experience in your life.
There is a guy — that turned out to be a super good friend now, love you Olivier ! — that I barely knew through Instagram at the time that sent me a message the day before my Castellon open marathon, wishing me good luck, but not only. He finished his message with this exact sentence : « At the end, it's all about how bad you want it. » Don't ask me why, but on the next day when I was struggling in the last kilometres of the race and fighting for breaking the #SUB3, all I was repeating to myself was « How bad you want it. How bad you worked hard for that moment. How bad you want it. How bad you want to cross that finish line as a champion. How bad you want it. » It was that music just all over again, I was at that point just completely disconnected from the external world until the last turn leading to the finish line. It actually worked so effectively for me that I kept that motto since then for every race.
That's just a way for me to deal with the effort when I'm facing difficulties, but in normal circumstances I'm still talking to myself. It's mostly stupid things, like a situation I went through in the past, and how I should have reacted, or imagining where I would like travel in the world, my next party with friends. It doesn't last for long each time, because I have to focus on the race, its strategy and associated data. But for some minutes I'm just escaping from my body, the fatigue, and letting the time fly away a little bit. It’s how I managed to get through both my IronMan 140.6 bike legs without too much mental damage. It might be very different for you, because again we're all the product of our environment, but drawing strength from daily life is something definitely working for me.
A last word on that “yogi ” bandwagon train that many pro triathletes are jumping on lately. At that competition level, I have no doubt that the slightest thing can have a potentially big impact on the outcome. Even though I never tried yet, I have no doubt that yoga and other kinds of meditation could be helpful to handle the stress. It’s just that at some point there are only 24 hours, and I just haven't had any chance to give it a try. But that for sure could be an option to consider in the future.
When I’m focused, there is not one single thing, person, anything that can stand in my way of my doing something . There is not.
— Michael Phelps
Don’t give a fuck about others
When I posted on my private Instagram account that I was registering for an IronMan 140.6, a friend sent me a message saying that she had a colleague who did IronMan Nice a few weeks ago, and that I should definitely meet him. I can perfectly recall that lunch, actually the last one outside before jumping into the cold and darkness of winter in late September 2018. He gave me solid feedback about what to expect out there, and asked me when I was planning to start my training. I answered « right now » and I can see all over again that cheeky face answering me that it was too early « and not sustainable mentally in the long run. » He was kind enough to offer some of his time to discuss and share his experience, so it wasn’t time to argue. But that punchline motivated me even more. Fun fact, I met that guy again a year later in a completely random way with one of his friends. When we discussed about my time, that cheeky face was now miles and miles away.
This is just one example, but I could give many others because throughout my one-year journey in triathlon, I talked to many people, including a bunch of naysayers who said that I would not achieve the high goal I set myself. Some may even have laughed behind my back. I read, heard everything but I just ignored what they were saying, because the task in itself was already so rough that I didn’t need extra weight to carry on the journey.
I’m sure you know Michael Phelps, probably the greatest swimmer of all time. Well, this one-in-a-million athlete wrote a book — No Limits : The Will to Succeed — that I would recommend to anyone, and there is especially this sentence that I kept for myself : « When I’m focused, there is not one single thing, person, anything that can stand in my way of my doing something . There is not. » This is literally me, minus the 28 Olympic medals.
On a more serious conclusion note, for a year I made every single day a total effort even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying ; I never felt that I didn’t have a chance. I learnt that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it. But in order to be successful, you must believe that you can be successful, whatever people are telling you. If there was only one thing to keep from this chapter, that would be it : believe in you, work hard, and trust the process.