Interesting…analogy to running the mile and the “first quarter/last quarter statement”.
I was around 21K in the run and someone said, “great, now the final stretch”…I said, “are you kidding me”…3.8K swim/180k bike/21K run is only the first half…21-31K is the third quarter of the race…32-42 is the “final quarter”. Seriously I don’t even feel like I am mentally halfway done an Ironman when I get to the end of run loop1! The entire loop 2 is mentally half the battle!
Anyway, I think all of this is good discussion. I really do believe that the mental aspect is under appreciated. I even try to back off in the final 2-3 weeks on any workouts that are mentally hard (be it intensity, or simply the logistics of pulling the workout off). I feel there are only so many mental matches to burn through the year, and i have to save many to get through those final 21k…anyway, this year, I used a ton to get to my goal of “just running/jogging/shuffling” every step…no walking.
Dev
I believe this is what got me in IMLP. Three weeks out I tapered but it was during a week of vacation and taper is still 13 hours with intensity during alot of the workouts. I had just gotten through three tough weeks of training and really “congradulated” myself a little to much during the first week of taper. It made the workouts that much tougher as I was working out later in the morning and it took a lot to get through them, especially from the mental aspect. I basically burned the candle to hard at both ends and it really cost me. It was by far the worse week of training I had. When I got to the run in IMLP, I was abour 400-500 calories deficient, had gone totally off my gameplan on sodium, etc… That being said, after 2-3 miles of struggling I could feel the mental burden of trying to come back begin to work on me, not a good place to be.
For me, the mental part is much more difficult than the physical part. I was fit going into the race, but I lost focus on the nuitrition plan on the bike and broke down mentally on the run. There were discussions about the Olympic distance and being mentally tough. I would much rather do the Olympic distance from a mental standpoing than an IM. It may hurt more, but it doesn’t last nearly as long.
In our group here we use this, “for 364 days you build a car with better horsepower and better fuel economy…on race day you get to drive it and fuel it, but you won’t get more horsepower or fuel efficiency on race day. You’re more like a formula 1 pilot than anything else”.
…and the part you put down that I bolded fits into being an F1 pilot. I know I have made that mistake more often than I care to count. This year, I kind of fell off my nutrition plan during run loop 1 especially when I rolled over on my right ankle on a curb and then I focused on getting that leg working rather than focusing on keeping up the nutrition plan…pretty soon my calories were too concentrated and I could take nothing in for the last 15k…
Dev