Where was it: my mental sweet spot at IRONMAN? It felt like there were magnitudes more stress going into that race, and mega-magnitudes more possibility that it wouldn’t go my way. But the big ugly monster in Kona with the ultimate pressure was the final proving ground. I’d found my mental sweet spot at other races like the Nice International Triathlon that I’d won six times going into the 1989 IRONMAN. ![]() Going into 1989 I knew what it felt like to win at other races. It was a painful year-to-year learning curve where the only litmus test happened in Kona. So figuring out my mental sweet spot was no slam-dunk. Who have you ever heard getting a C in PE! In eighth grade I got a C in my physical education class. ![]() In second grade I was one of the slowest runners in my entire school. I didn’t grow up with a vast pool of experiences that supported the possibility that I could be a world champion in one of the toughest events on the planet. I didn’t come into the sport of triathlons with that tool chest. You know how to find it, use it, and then see where the chips fall at the end of the day. And if you have ever broken new ground, you know that your mental sweet spot is something you can command when it’s time. You know that you have just as much of a chance of hitting the goal as anyone on the planet. If you are someone who has had a history of being good at something, you can draw upon that to find your mental sweet spot for any of the big things in life. They simply apply as much pressure as they can for as long as they can-almost as a game to see what they can come up, rather than as a strategy to win. The very best know they can’t control every feature of success on the day. How could I be the best in the biggest race on one single day against the best in the world? How was I going to get in the right mood to go deep into the effort I knew it would take to win? That effort was painful, and frankly, thinking about it paralyzed me. ![]() The whole IRONMAN experience had seemed bigger than life to me, the kind where all my normal day-to-day ways of approaching things just seemed to be so puny and ineffective. It was a mental place that I just couldn’t figure out how to get to in the previous six years racing there. I found that mental sweet spot for the first time in 1989 at the IRONMAN World Championship. Here are some thoughts on how to find it for your next best race. My mental sweet spot was where I was OK with giving absolutely everything I had, knowing full well I had an equal chance of completely falling apart. It was the place where I was ready to earn the dream. It was a mental sweet spot where I felt both strength and hope, but wasn’t expecting anyone to just hand me a great race. It was the place where I was feeling charged up by the pressure and anticipation but not overwhelmed by it where I was relaxed within the nervousness. One of the toughest parts of competing in big races for me was finding my mental sweet spot-that place I could go that enabled me to take the hugeness of the day and use it to fuel me to a great performance.
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