Mental Fitness

Failure Is An Option

And sometimes the best one By Coach Maria Simone A few years ago, I signed up for the Ouray 50. When I registered, I reviewed the basics to ensure that this race would have the criteria I wanted: a lot of vertical change. Check ✅. A long duration on my feet. Check ✅. An iconic[…]

Managing the Post Race Blues

By Dr. JoAnne Bullard The emotions leading up to race day are HUGE! There’s usually a mix of excitement, nervousness, and happiness. An athlete’s mind is preparing for the unknown, which can cause emotions to hit a higher level. This can naturally cause athletes to feel a little uneasy or anxious. This can happen even[…]

How To Develop a Precompetition Mental Toughness Routine

By Dr. JoAnne Bullard As endurance athletes, we have many aspects of training to consider, including the training program, nutrition, equipment and gear, developing our race schedule, working with a coach, and self-care.  A huge component to incorporate in a training program are psychological modalities.  Learning to be proactive with implementing these modalities is an[…]

Your Best Race Is In Your Head

8 Mindfulness Practices to Boost Performance By Coach Maria Simone Hard physical work is important for our success. That is a given for us as endurance athletes. However, the hours of hard work are not enough to bring us to our best performance on race day. In order to find that extra bit of our[…]

Mental Fitness Part 3: Mental Toughness Strategies for Training & Racing

In our third and final part of the the mental fitness series, we look at some specific mental toughness strategies you can use in training and racing.  Part one looked the role of our motivations, while part two considered the ways in which our thoughts influence our behaviors. In this part, we look at how[…]

Mental Fitness Part 2: The Central Governor & Self-Efficacy

In the first segment of this 3-part series of mental fitness, we discussed the role of motivation in endurance sport. But, motivation is only one part of mental toughness and fitness. In this post, we look at the ways in which our mind can help or hinder our physical performance.  No doubt many of you have set significant[…]

Mental Fitness Part 1: What motivates you?

“It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ; it’s the brain” ~Sir Roger Bannister In a previous post, we talked about developing and writing goals for the coming season. While physical training is an important part of achieving these goals, it is just one element to achieving your season goals.[…]

5 Goal-Setting Tips to Turn Your Dreams Into Reality

As one year comes to a close and the next one begins, many of us will take part in the tradition of making new year resolutions to be better in some way. Yet, we frequently find that our commitment to these resolutions dwindles as the sparkle of the new year fades. What’s up with that?[…]

Scroll to top

Accessibility Toolbar