Cresting the hill on Davie, on my way to work this morning, I was greeted by a strange sight. Instead of having a clear view past Denman of beautiful English Bay, all I saw was white at the bottom of the hill. It took a second to figure out what was going on but when I did, my heart jumped into my throat. The entire square at Davie and Denman had been shut down and tents had been put up to get ready for Worlds this week/weekend. To say I got a little excited would be an understatement.
Then driving home, going past the same intersection, I saw they had begun putting up fencing around the beach start area and grandstands had gone up (yeah, I’m in an event where they need to put up grandstands). Heart starts racing again.
Four more days of work, driving past twice a day, I might wear myself out with excitement.
So tonight starts mental preparation. If there is one thing I learnt from years of golf (some of it competitive) it’s that what you bring to competition mentally can be just as important as what you bring physically. If you can’t see yourself doing something in your own mind, chances are you wont be able to do it in real life.
Most of what I learnt about mental prepartion in sports comes from the book Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect by Bob Rotella. While it focuses mostly on golf, the lessons are applicable to any sport as, in my opinion, there is no more difficult sport when it comes to mental focus than golf (you try refocusing 70-80 times over 4-5 hours enough to repeat a motion so precisely that you can judge the flight of a ball down to a couple of feet while the memory of the terrible shot you just hit probably because your swing was off plane by half a degree is hanging over you).
As an example, when putting, I never thought about how I was going to make my stroke. Instead I would stand over a putt until I could see the ball rolling down the line I had chosen and going into the hole in my mind. As soon as I could see the ball in the hole I turned my head to the ball and hit it. Nothing but that image of the ball rolling into the hole was in my mind when I hit it. At least on a good day.
Obviously there were days when my mind wasn’t in it and just couldn’t do it. And then there were others when my visualization was so strong, I swear I could actually see the ball rolling before I even hit it. No big surprise but those were the days I putted the best, when my mind was so focused I couldn’t imagine anything but making the putt.
So for 15 or so minutes each night this week, I’ll do my best to get my mind in shape for Saturday. Put some quiet music on and sit with my eyes closed thinking about the race. Seeing myself standing at the start line, feeling the cold water but still swimming strong, picturing flying up the hill to Prospect Point, finding an extra gear on the run and, most importantly, visualizing myself looking at my watch, crossing the finish line under my goal time. Because if I can’t see myself doing in my head, what chance do I have doing it on Saturday.
And the time on my watch reads 2:09.
