Now You See Me...

Visualization is a very powerful tool for some athletes.  Some use it to mentally picture victory.  Others create calming scenes to block stress.  Others like me use it to figure out the puzzle of difficult obstacles.

Yesterday I came upon a brand new obstacle and I could not figure out how to get over it.  So first I asked someone to demonstrate it.  But now matter how many times I watched, then tried to reproduce their moves, I could not get over it.  Rather than get frustrated, I stopped trying.  I stopped thinking about it.  Sometimes thinking too hard about an obstacle, especially while you are standing right in front of it, is too taxing.  It messes with your head.  It psyches you out.  And your odds of failure increase.

OCR is undoubtedly a mental game.  Like all other high-performance sports, having your head in the game is critical.  But it's not easy.  Situations like the one I describe above are better during practice.  That's the time to fail.  Fail multiple times in fact.  That's why it's called practice.  Visualization however, is practice best accomplished off the field in this particular case.

It didn't happen until about 11 o'clock last night.  I was already an hour and a half into trying to get to sleep.  But you know how it it.  These things bug you.  These are puzzles you just have to solve.  There's no way you're not going to nail that obstacle on race day.  I finally saw in my mind's eye what I had missed after watching one guy (the devious builder and designer of the obstacle) nail it with ease over and over again.  I missed it after watching the video of him doing it.  Even in slo-mo I could not see it.  Until that magic moment happened.  That breakthrough thought.  The one that eluded me in conscious thinking and watching.

He did something with his legs and body that I had not.  It was counter-intuitive.  But it was the solution.  Am I right?  Well, I will hit the course one more time this week to find out.  Race day is Saturday.  In the meantime, I will practice hard.

I have not given out a Mud Smear award in a while.  This one goes to the master designer, my friend Larry Cooper, with ABF Mud Run.  See you Saturday my man.  At the top of your obstacle!