The breaking point
When it comes to achieving a personal best, athletes often focus on the physical — how to train smarter, rest more, eat cleaner or wear the more advanced gear. And while those factors certainly matter, it’s often the mental shifts, memories or unexpected cheers from the crowd that can take athletes from their personal norms to their personal bests. “Those small, trivial and ubiquitous aspects that you may not even notice make a big difference in your performance,” says Juan Delgado, a sports scientist and certified biomechanist at the New York Sports Science Lab in Staten Island. Here, athletes share what made the difference for them — and how they might apply to you:
Forget the judges
Katie Flashner was on a streak — and in the wrong direction. The accomplished ballroom dancer had consistently placed first or second in competitions for years, but in 2017, her standings declined, one competition at a time. She ended the season in fifth place at the world championships — an ego blow, in her book. So this year, Flashner, a 35-year-old client services manager in Orange County, California, who blogs about ballroom dancing, took on a new mindset: Rather than trying to please the judges, she’s danced for herself. She’s placed first or second in every competition since. “I felt redeemed!” she says. Indeed, Delgado says, while an audience can motivate some athletes, for others, it’s a performance-inhibiting distraction.
For the love of family
When John Friedman and his two brothers set out to complete a triathlon as a relay team in honor of their dad, who has Alzheimer’s disease, he was terrified he’d be the weakest link. So despite never having biked more than 30 miles, Friedman rode the 56-mile cycling leg faster than any of his training rides and without stopping to rest. “Very few things have ever given me as much joy … as riding my first long-distance race with and for the man who bought me my first bike and taught me how to ride it,” recalls Friedman, a 55-year-old sustainability in communications professional in Annandale, Virginia, whose dad watched the event and received a medal, too.
‘I was so sick of being sick.’
Michael D’Hondt knows pain: He had bone cancer at age 14 and underwent seven serious surgeries about four years ago to salvage his leg. For six months after the surgeries, he used a wheelchair and gained weight. “I was so sick of being weak and sick,” remembers the 30-year-old dentist in La Crosse, Wisconsin. So he committed to never feeling that way again and got back into cycling. Eventually, he dropped the weight and completed his first Ironman triathlon in 2017, beating his goal by 2 seconds. “No matter how hard I push, I remember I will not be able to replicate the pain from when I had to rebuild my leg,” he says.
A high five
When Mary Nikoo hit mile 20 of the 2016 Chicago Marathon, she was beaten down physically and emotionally. “Voices of feeling rejected were going on in my head like a repeating tape,” remembers the 32-year-old elementary school teacher in Chicago who had started running less than a year before to cope with a breakup. But when a girl in the crowd high-fived Nikoo, she snapped out of it. “In that moment, I was reminded of my students. In [their] eyes, I am a hero,” says Nikoo, who finished the marathon — her first — in goal time. “As I crossed the finish line, I bent over and couldn’t stop crying,” she remembers. “I made it!”
Imaginary taunts
Fabienne Raphaël knew what her opponent was telling her, even if just in her mind: “Don’t you think you’re going to miss? Why don’t you throw the ball to the left? It’s time you miss now,” Raphaël imagined the opponent taunting. That was the fuel Raphaël, a Canadian team handball player at the time, needed. Each time she heard that voice in her head, Raphaël says, “I took a deep breath. I cleared my thoughts. I concentrated and visualized the ball in the goal. I waited for the whistle. I shot.” It worked. Raphaël, now a 41-year-old business consultant, speaker and podcaster, made all five shots to help her team win the Pan American Games semi-final against the U.S.
A public declaration
The day before she ran her fifth marathon, Heather Jennings posted on Facebook that she’d either achieve a personal record or die trying. The 45-year-old data analyst in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, kept up her bold talk throughout the race itself, which was just about 10 miles from her home and included plenty of participants and organizers she knew. “As I ran by [my friends,] I let them know that I was going to PR.” She was right — beating her best time by about two and a half minutes. “I busted out in tears,” Jennings says. “It had taken me four years to get a better time than my first marathon.”
A mantra
Jeff Brennan had spent the last 24 hours “rucking” (or moving as fast as he could) for 40 miles with a 45-pound pack, stopping only to carry logs, hoist people and tackle other challenges the team-based event — called the Goruck Heavy — threw his way. He could have collected his finisher’s patch and gone to bed, but he attacked two more related events right after the first one — the Goruck Challenge and Goruck Light. He credits a mantra he’d decided on with a friend: Get to the challenge. “If we could [get to the second event], momentum would take over the rest,” remembers Brennan, a 37-year-old media relations manager in Chicago, who was awake for 65.5 hours to complete his first “HCL.” “It worked out.”
Visualization
Technically, Angela Bonnici had never run a marathon. But mentally, she had. “In my mind, I had already ran every single inch of the course, felt what every hill and bridge felt like, strategized where my friends would stand [and] how it would feel to cross the finish line,” says Bonnici, a 35-year-old public relations professional in New York City, who ran the city’s 2017 marathon on behalf of Special Olympics New York. “When I got to … the starting line, I literally felt like I had already been there.” Her visualization exercises paid off: Bonnici finished the race and is training for this year’s race in support of the same charity again.
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What Made the Difference the Day 8 Athletes Achieved Personal Records originally appeared on usnews.com
