I remember being told for years that top athletes visualised what their event before doing it.
Sounds good I thought, however, for a long time I had no idea what that meant, and nobody really seemed to want to explain it. What exactly do people mean when they say the spend time visualing their race?
It wasn't until years later that I really started to understand what visualisation meant, and that I had been doing it for quite some time.
So what is it?
Well, I think somebody visualising an event before doing it can take many forms. For some people it may be an actual mental play through on an entire event. Great if your event is the 100m freestyle, less good if your event is an Ironman. For me visualisation really became about my race plan. Working through my race plan in my mind, what was my target pace/power/intensity, when and what was I going to eat, perhaps playing through key steps like the swim start or a transition.
The actual visualisation wasn't just a mental play through during a quiet moment either, it used to have several parts. For a race my nutrition plan was usually finalised weeks, if not months before. It was well known and rehearsed. The race plan itself was also fairly well established, usually done a week or two before the event and well understood by race week. The actual visulatation was the final cherry on the top of these plans. I used to take a moment, usually as I was heading to bed and run through all these components, making sure they were clear and I knew what I was doing and when. I would normally do this for a couple of nights until I was confident that I knew what I needed to do. When I actually got to the race course the visualisation would usually include a bit of time walking the transitions, perhaps walking the swim exit, spending a bit of time on course if I could get it. The process didn't get rid of nerves, but it did help build confidence that I was ready for what was coming.
So, that then brings me to the question of why. Why go to the trouble of visualistation, other than because people say it is a good thing to do. Well for me it all comes back to that issue of confidence. As I have discussed before, my race plan didn't just cover a good day, but it also covered a bad day and an exceptionally amazing day. When I went through my visualisation I covered these scenarios there too.
A long course triathlon is not a place to be crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. A successful long course race comes off the back of some good planning (and good training obviously). The visualisation is the link between that good planning and the good execution. There is no point having a good plan if you can't remember it, or when the going gets tough you panic and throw it out the window. The visualisation process is the prompt to make sure your plans are in place, that they make sense and that you know them.
It really is only a little thing, but it is part of the preparation that separates successful athletes from everyone else.
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