Zeiger - The champion mindset: an athletes guide to mental toughness

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To my husband, Mark, my parents, Bob and Karen, and my sister, Laurie, for their unwavering support

Memorial Day weekend, 2000. Dallas, Texas. It was the first ever U.S. Triathlon Olympic Trials. The triathlon was to debut in September at the Sydney Olympics. The distance was a 0.9 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, and 10 km run). Twenty-five women earned the right to race at the Trials based on their International Triathlon Union (ITU) ranking, where a top-125 ranking was needed. Two U.S. women would make the team in Dallas; one person had already been selected in April based off of a finish in a race of the same distance on the Olympic course. This was my one shot, since I did not receive an invite to the April race because my ITU rank was not high enough.

I was nervous, but not overly so. The pressure was on the other athletes who were ranked higher and had many more years of international racing experience. I was a veritable newbie with only a handful of international races under my belt. As a PhD student whod turned professional just two years earlier, I didnt have the time or luxury of globe-trotting. None of that mattered, though, when the gun went off. My competitive instincts took over. I knew what to do. I felt nothing but the desire to win. To push myself to whatever limits I had on the day.

I came out of the water in a group of thirteen women, sixty seconds behind the two lead women, Sheila Taormina and Barb Lindquist. The two in the front rode like they were in a perfectly practiced ballet. Their synchrony was in stark contrast to the pell-mell of our group of thirteen. We couldnt get organized; indeed, it almost seemed like there was an intentional slowing down of our group to provide the front-runners with more of an advantage. By the time we hit the transition to the run, we were almost four minutes in arrears to Sheila and Barb.

Four minutes! That is essentially an eternity in triathlon parlance. Over a 6.2 mile run, that equates to roughly forty seconds per mile. Making up that amount of time is virtually unheard of at that level. When my feet hit the ground, I scrambled through the transition with those numbers floating through my head. I was angry. Angry that our group of thirteen could be so complacent. Angry that I was now racing for an alternate spot. Angry that my favorite hat had flown off within the first two minutes of the run and now the sun was relentlessly beating down on my head. I tried to ignore the oppressive heat and humidity and the fact that two days before the race Id had to sit down on a park bench in the middle of a short, easy run due to dizziness from the Texas swelter.

I settled into a rhythm. I ran hard. I ran off my anger. Within two miles, I started hearing that Barb was faltering in the heat and that I had a sizable gap to the women behind me. Suddenly, the impossible became possible, as halfway through the run I was in second place, in contention for a coveted Olympic spot. All I had to do now was stay hydrated, stay calm, and not succumb to the heat and the excitement.

The homestretch was long and crowded with spectators who cheered for me as I made my way across the line. I raised my arms in jubilation. Years of training, injuries, dealing with asthma, and the complexities of being a student-athlete all came into focus. None of it mattered anymore. I was an Olympian. Sheila was waiting at the line. We embraced. No longer competitors, we were teammates.

Using the mental game to augment physical fitness

Im often asked how much of my athletic success can be credited to my physical abilities and how much can be attributed to my mental makeup. Champions, as the familiar adage preaches, are not borntheyre made. And to a large degree thats true. Reaching the top of any sport, or anything in life for that matter, takes years upon years of dedication and proper preparation. But if theres a huge pool of individuals who have undertaken the same commitment to become the best at something, and each has undertaken similar steps toward that end, what truly separates the winners from everyone else?

There was a time when I used to believe that excellence was primarily based on putting in the work. Those who touched the wall first in a swimming race or broke the finish tape in a running or triathlon competition just trained harder than everyone else. There is no substitute, after all, for hard work. At least thats the lesson that was continually drilled into my head during my formative years. At some point, though, as I continued to achieve higher and higher levels of success, it occurred to me that the prevailing wisdom was just plain wrong. What truly distinguishes the champions is their mental edge.

The Champion Mindset: An Athletes Guide to Mental Toughness is a much-needed and long-overdue look into how to program a competitors mind to achieve optimal success. Changing behaviors and ways of thinking are never easy, but the chapters in this book aim to simplify this process to make it manageable and achievable. This book will appeal to a wide array of athletesfrom the weekend warrior, who wants nothing more than to complete his or her first 5 km running race or marathon, to those seeking to improve their personal records in the swimming pool or on the triathlon course, to those who dream of one day qualifying for the Ironman World Championship, and to those who have aspirations of one day becoming Olympians and World Champions.

Get with the program

The turning point, for me, came when I was fourteen. My fledgling athletic career, rocky from the start, had taken shape some seven years earlier in a San Diego swimming pool. My parents had joined a swim and racket club, and since they knew my baby sister and I would be spending a lot of time in and around the pool, they enrolled us in swim lessons so that wed be water-safe. It wasnt love at first dip for meand I certainly wasnt a natural, la Missy Franklin, a multiple Olympic medalist. My initial efforts were clumsy: a bizarre collection of body contortions, uneven kicks, and desperate arm strokes. I was actually rejected on my first swim team tryout, relegated to further lessons. Gradually, though, I started to see improvement.

Anyway, that pivotal day when I was fourteen, our team traveled up to Mission Viejo to participate in one of the biggest meets of the summer. At some point in the seven years from the beginning of my swim career to that day in Mission Viejo, Id become enamored with the adrenaline rush that comes from trying to do something as wondrously pure as racing across a swimming pool as quickly as possible. On this particular occasion, though, I seemed to be lugging around a dark cloud tethered to the shoulder straps on my swimsuit because my coach, Mr. Weckler, had taken it upon himself to sign me up for the 400 meter Individual Medley. Id been moping about the development for days, because the 400 IM is one of those dreaded events that most levelheaded swimmers try to avoid. Its so intimidating and grueling, in fact, that even Michael Phelps, the greatest 400 IMer in history, has been adamant in his refusal to add it back into his schedule no matter how many times he makes a comeback.