Winning a race is more than simply running your best. Sometimes it's also a psychological duel. If you've ever watched Olympic distance races or a major marathon on TV, for example, you'll have seen competitors throwing "surges" at each other, as they pick up the pace in an effort to psyche out their rivals.
The goal is to make the other runner feel defeated - "broken" in the parlance of racing.
"If you sense that your competition isn't feeling good or is at a weak point physically or psychologically, that's a point at which you might want to apply some pressure," says Olympic coach (and former world record holder) Alberto Salazar. "Surging is one tactic, where you pick up the pace dramatically beyond what you can realistically hold of the rest of the race, in an effort to break away."
The idea is that if you open a seemingly unbeatable gap, the other runner will give up, even when you slow back down to your original pace.
But does it work? Yes and no. Today we'll discuss the "yes." How to beat it will be the topic of Part 2 of this post.
The "yes" part is simple.
"Your psychological state of mind has been shown to affect performance without a doubt," says Salazar. "It's not just that somebody gives up and falls back. When they're psychologically broken, their muscles become measurably weaker. It's mind/body stuff."
Holly can definitely attest that it works: she was on the receiving end of it in a recent 5-mile road race. Going in, she'd felt good. She'd rested well the night before, eaten a good breakfast. Her training had shown signs that she was in personal-best shape. She was looking for a breakthrough.
At the start, none of her usual rivals were on the front line, and a new hope surged: maybe, she thought, I have an outside chance of winning this thing.
For the first two miles it indeed looked to be her day. Her racing flats felt like wings on her feet and bands stationed along the course fueled both her motivation and her adrenaline. Her first mile was fast, and she felt like she could run that pace forever. A big crowd helped, cheering her on. You're the first woman! You go, Girl!
And then, suddenly, there was the sound of breathing behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the unexpected: another woman, drawing up fast, passing her like she was standing still - or worse, like she was an inanimate object.
She knew what had happened: she herself had been coached that, when you pass people, you should pass them like you intend them to stay passed. But it didn't matter: disappointment flooded through her, bringing fatigue with it.
Breakthrough performances, she later realized, come from trusting your ability to hang on in the late stages of the race. But at the point the other runner passed her, this too broke.
Realistically, the other runner was running her own breakthrough race, and was probably uncatchably fast. But when Holly gave up on the win, she also stopped trusting her ability to hang on, convinced she couldn't hold a pace that would've given her a PR. From that point on, she was simply trying to finish.
But it doesn't have to be that way: sports psychology is complex. It's possible to be "broken" then come back and break the person who broke you. But that's part 2 of this post. For the moment we'll conclude with the lesson Holly took from her recent race, which is that you're only broken when you think you are. Next time, she vows, she may be beaten, but she won't be broken.
