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Race Control
The brain is a very important part of regulating how hard we compete, assuring that we don’t consciously push ourselves to injury, or even death. The brain accomplishes this task by constantly monitoring all body activities, from muscle activities to the levels of energy, in particular during the course of a race. It even plans out the course and is aware of our need for a final kick to the finish.
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The brain is always seeking to perform the best it can in a race but not at the expense of allowing damage to the body.
Once the body has undergone a process of training to build fitness and health, you’re ready to race. This is sometimes best accomplished by just letting your brain do the work. Instead, too many athletes try new strategies in the middle of their races, surprising their brain, and putting the body under greater stress. Instead, when “all systems are go” as a result of proper training, you can start the race on autopilot. It’s proper training of the brain and the rest of your body that best pre-pare you to race most effectively, allowing intuition and instincts to participate. An athlete that exemplifies this well is Mark Allen. His intense but relaxed pre-race focus before a triathlon and his knowledge that training provided what he needed helped him to let the brain run the race. Not that strategy is not part of the process. For example, in athletes performing long endurance events, I encourage maintaining high aerobic activity for much of the race, without entering the anaerobic state until later, helping keep the brain functioning well. In Mark’s case, the swim and bike leg were aerobic and not until the run did his body become anaerobic, especially for the last 10 percent of the race.
The brain is always seeking to perform the best it can in a race, but not at the expense of allowing damage to the body. Consider a race where you begin at a much faster pace than planned, and one too fast to maintain. The stress on your muscles, ligaments, joints, and bones, and the overtaxing of your various metabolic mechanisms that produce energy, including the reduction in fat burning and rapid loss of sugar for energy, all inform the brain that you’re going to be in trouble real soon. The brain offers a subconscious solution: reduce the pace by slowing the various muscles in hopes of recovering for the upcoming miles to the finish. As you notice the pace slow, despite feeling bad, you consciously decide to try to maintain your toofast effort. Your brain now projects a potential serious problem ahead, since your fitness level won’t keep you going without a significant reduction in speed, but you still won’t make the conscious change of pace. In the end your brain wins, and you pull off the road to catch your breath and decide to drop out because you feel so bad. Your brain has saved you from serious damage, except to your ego, maybe.
