The 6 Tips That Helped Me Get Over a Bad Race and Rebuild My Confidence
I ran my ninth marathon, the Chevron Houston Marathon, in January, and to say it didn’t go as planned would be a huge understatement.
I had a very strong marathon training cycle, nailing most of my speed workouts and long runs, avoiding illness or injury the whole time. The weather on race day ended up being perfect—38 degrees and sunny, a gift considering Houston’s unpredictable winters that are perfectly chilly one weekend and 80 degrees and humid the next. (The latter is exactly how the marathon played out the previous year).
Despite the fact that I was feeling so confident leading up to the race, I lined up at the race start feeling slightly off mentally. I got there way too early, I didn't get in my one last bathroom visit, and I was bummed that my husband had to back out from the race last minute. Even though I didn’t feel great, I still managed to run the first half of the race right on target for my 3:40 time goal. But soon afterward, (TMI alert!) I actually had to pull over and throw up on the side of the road several times in the second half. Since I was feeling off and not really hungry that morning, my breakfast kind of just sat there and it all finally caught up with me after a couple of hours of running.
Even though I slowed down significantly, I actually didn’t walk until mile 24, and the only thing that kept me from leaving the course was the fact that it would have been a pain to borrow a stranger’s phone to call my husband and then still get to the finish line to collect my checked-in belongings. That, and the voice inside my head that reminded me that I've never regretted finishing a race, even when it wasn't my best. I think if I had dropped out I would have wondered if I could have salvaged my race and finished better than expected if I'd just been a little tougher.
When I finally crossed the finish in 4:11:01—31 minutes over my goal—you can bet I was disappointed.
Everyone always says you should be proud to have just finished, and I always ultimately am. But I also know I’m not alone in my initial raw disappointment after missing a big goal. I’m still not sure what really happened to me that day, because physically I was fine after it was all over. Perhaps the energy chews I’d chased my breakfast with were overkill, or maybe nerves just got the best of me.
This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d ever had a bad race—and I usually pride myself on the fact that I’ve learned to take myself and running less seriously as I’ve gotten older. The previous year’s marathon played out similarly, but the fact that it was because of the weather somehow made it easier to get over and move on after. This time around, I spent too much time beating myself up for “wasting” a perfect race day.
I was tempted to sign up for another marathon right away, but ultimately decided it wasn’t the best move.
I know my body and mind well enough to know that in order to avoid burnout and injury, it’s best if I stick to running just one full marathon a year. This frees me up to focus the rest of the year to get faster at shorter distances. At the same time, having all that time to think about how far away your next shot will be can make the mourning period even harder.
But in the end, I just had no desire to tackle another 20-plus miles again so soon. I knew that signing myself up for a race I just wasn’t as excited about was not going to set me up for success.
So how could I get over it and feel confident about running again? I asked a couple of experts to help me learn how to move on.
1. Let yourself mourn, but not for too long.
“Runners as a group tend to be very goal-oriented, self-disciplined people,” Jack J. Lesyk, Ph.D., a certified sport and performance psychologist and director at the Ohio Center for Sport Psychology in Beachwood, Ohio, tells me. “When a runner completes an event, their first reaction tends to be emotional, whether it’s fist-bumping after doing well, or hanging their head low in disappointment.” While being disappointed is totally normal, he adds, it’s important to not let yourself dwell on it for too long. “What’s really important is switching from being emotional and transforming the experience into a learning experience to carry over to your next race.”
Lesyk advises athletes to ask themselves if they lived up to their values on race day, namely if they were pursuing their goals for the right reasons. I personally run long distances for the happiness and joy that it brings me, and for the personal sense of accomplishment. While I admittedly didn’t feel particularly accomplished on race day, I could assure myself that I lived up to those values throughout my training.
Cindra Kamphoff, Ph.D., a certified mental performance consultant, high-performance coach, and author of Beyond Grit: 10 Powerful Practices to Gain the High-Performance Edge, stresses the importance of learning from the experience without letting it destroy your confidence.
“Even the best athletes in the world will tell you that they’re not confident all the time, and negative emotions don’t lead to peak performance,” she says. “The most successful athletes have a short-term memory of their failures and a long-term memory of their successes because they are intentional about what they focus on. Once you learn from your failures, there’s no reason to revisit them.”
2. Be objective.
After a bad race, Kamphoff advises runners to ask themselves, “What would I see from this situation if I took myself out of it, or what would my best friends see from the outside looking in?” Chances are, you’d be much more compassionate toward someone else.
“Sometimes when we take a performance so personally, we make generalizations about ourselves and our abilities when perhaps there’s a reason a bad day happened and there’s a lesson to take from it,” Kamphoff said. “There are important lessons we can learn from failures and disappointments, and it helps to remove ourselves to avoid impacting our overall confidence.”
3. Adopt a “burn phrase.”
Kamphoff suggests phrases such as “burn it,” “let it go,” or even “flush it” to help you move on from a disappointing performance.
“If you keep on ruminating on it and beating yourself up, you may end up lacking the confidence to run another marathon,” she said. “If you have a phrase to use when you’re really stuck on a bad day, it will help you keep from overthinking it.”
4. Embrace the silver lining.
The fact that I didn’t end up racing hard for the full 26.2 miles in January meant that my body wasn’t as drained as it usually is after a marathon. Three weeks after the race, I lined up for a local 10K and finished in 45:08, taking almost 2 minutes off my previous personal best.
This was an instant confidence booster that made me finally see for myself that I was, and still am, fit and well trained. It also helped to make the marathon a more distant memory and allowed me to focus ahead on my next goal: to run a PR at the Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans Half Marathon the following month.
5. Choose courage over comfort.
Even though it wasn’t the goal this year, my long-term goal is to qualify for the Boston Marathon (which would require shaving about 20 minutes off my current marathon PR). Every time I’ve fallen short of my current goals, I’ve tended to beat myself up, telling myself I’m even further from reaching that Boston qualifier time. Kamphoff urged me not to let go of that goal—I’m only 31 years old, and judging by my history and training practices, I still have many strong marathon performances ahead of me.
“Our dreams should be just a little bit scary, and we should have goals that are right beyond our reach because then we’re always striving and moving toward something that is going to push us,” she says. “By choosing to be courageous instead of just staying in your comfort zone, the disappointments of races that don’t go so well can ultimately lead you to something bigger and better.”
6. Nail your next short-term goal.
I spoke with Kamphoff in the days leading up to the New Orleans Half Marathon, so naturally I asked her for advice on how to do my best despite still experiencing some feelings of self-doubt. She encouraged me to visualize four races where I ended up crushing my goals, each for 20 to 30 seconds at a time, as sort of a “highlight reel” of sorts in my head.
“Imagery is the most-used mental skill by elite athletes, and even when you’re not running it can be effective in terms of improving your performance,” she said.
I took her advice to heart last weekend, easily coming up with four races from within the last year to replay in my head on race day. Between that and some perfect racing conditions—ideal weather, excellent course support, and pancake-flat terrain—I ended up crushing my previous PR, finishing in 1:41:03, a time that I thought was only in my dreams just a couple of years ago. I think I finally feel fully redeemed now.
