Kara Goucher - Strong: A Confidence Journal for Runners and All Brave Women

I FIRST MET KARA shortly after she graduated from the University of Colorado and for 18 years, I have had the privilege of knowing and working with her.

My first impression of Kara was that she was incredibly tough, competitive, fiercely passionate, and joyful. She stood out as a result of her remarkable grit and zest for life. To this day, my first impression of her has stood the test of time.

Working with athletes has been the primary focus of my career. When I received my masters degree, I worked at a community health center and was supervised by an astute therapist who recognized my love of sports. One of the first cases he referred to me involved a very talented yet troubled young man who happened to be a baseball superstar at his local high school. In short, he was a hotshot with a bad attitude, and his family was suffering.

While I was completing my doctoral studies at the University of Colorado, I would play pick-up basketball after work. One day as I searched for the bathroom, preparation met opportunity when I landed in the Human Performance Lab by mistake. It was there I met my mentor of the next twenty years.

Over those years, this sage taught me about world-class athletes, and helped me to form relationships with coaches and staff in the athletic department. These relationships led me to work with many elite athletes. Eventually, I met and worked with Adam Goucher to resolve issues that he encountered as a competitive runner, and he introduced me to Kara.

My work with athletes is part therapy, part coaching, part skill-building, part strategy, and part relationship managing. Therapy is focused on finding remedies for life situations and influences in ones past. The coaching work I engage in involves assessing where the athlete is currently, anchoring their strengths, and addressing their weaknesses. I help athletes to craft goals that make sense. Most importantly, we work together to shape a game plan for how to realize their full potential.

At our first meeting, Kara was already an NCAA champion and had received a little press. When we met, Kara was experiencing a high level of stress, as well as depression. She was injured and hadnt been able to defend her NCAA title in the 5,000 meters during the spring of her senior year.

Kara downplayed her success; she was sincere, and not at all cocky. She was perhaps too modest, but full of life, quick to laugh, and very direct. She didnt know what this therapy thing was, but like she did everything else, she was herself, did her best, worked hard, and approached the work honestly. With Kara, what you see is what you get.

Doing the work is Karas approach to everything, especially her training. She would kill workouts and training sessions, yet when we first started working together, she struggled with feeling unprepared and anxious. When it came time to race, she said she felt like an imposter, as if she didnt belong at the starting line.

She wasted so much energy before the race started that she would be toasted halfway through. The wasting of precious energy can happen any number of ways, but is often experienced through extreme muscle tension. For any distance runner, wasting energy with muscle tension is a big problem. For Kara, it was a factor that influenced how much gas she had left in her tank before the end of a race.

Recognizing this as a problem, our initial work together focused on relaxation. Kara was already incorporating a number of techniques for building confidence into her training, and I gave her more homework to do. I asked Kara to record one good thing she did every day in her workout. It was that simple: just write down one good thing. My only criteria was that Kara write with enough precision so she could read it months later and still recall each workout.

This exercise of keeping a confidence journal evolved. Kara couldnt discount the 400 repeats and other killer training sessions she had done. Even after a tough day, she would still write down something good. Maybe it was a good shakeout or a solid warm-up, but whatever it was, Kara would emphasize the good, and let go of the rest.

Kara did her homework consistently, and a few months later, something interesting happened. The night before a meet, she reviewed her confidence journal entries and noticed that she felt calm. Her journal reminded her that she had done the work, and deserved to toe-the-line with everyone else.

Recorded consistently over time, a confidence journal can lead to a champions mindset. It allows an individual to take ownership of their preparation, effort, and attitude toward success, one day at a time. As an everyday activity, this tool builds confidence like nothing else.

In fact, mental conditioning is increasingly recognized as an important part of an athletes training regimen. As the level of competition continues to rise, athletes are aided by the field of exercise science, better gear, and more sophisticated coaching. While physical differences are still a factor, winning and losing are more a matter of mental preparation and toughness.