The Psychology of Hitting the Wall: How to Clear the Biggest Obstacles on Race Day

Whether you’re new to triathlon, or a 20-year veteran of the sport, you have undoubtedly heard that it is an extremely mental endeavour. At its core, triathlon is very physical, but even the most finely tuned athletes can have races derailed by the smallest of hiccups — and all because of the mental side of the sport. Fortunately, there are ways you can prepare for the psychological parts of racing. They may not always work, but, just like putting in reps in the pool, on the bike or at the track, if you focus on these mental tips before your next race, you’ll increase your odds of making it to the finish line with a result you can be proud of.

It All Goes Back to Psychology

Brant Stachel is a registered psychotherapist and mental performance coach based in Kingston, Canada, just a few hours east of Toronto. He is also an athlete himself who ran at the collegiate level and competed as a professional triathlete in middle-distance racing.

Upon graduation, he began his coaching career (also in the Canadian collegiate running system). It wasn’t until 2022 that he decided to shift his focus to the mental side of sport, and he now doubles as both a mental and physical performance coach.

While endurance sports can be so mental, there are still many athletes who do not buy into sport psychology, Stachel says.

“It’s much more adopted in team sport and non-physiology sports,” he says. “A lot of people will make a straw-man argument that your mental state doesn’t actually matter in running, triathlon and other endurance sports as long as you work within the realms of your physiology.”

In other words, many athletes believe that if they have put in the physical training and they don’t mess up their pacing or nutrition plans on race day, how they’re feeling mentally on race day won’t matter.

“But that’s the thing,” Stachel says. “If you went out too fast in a race and blew up, why did you do it? Is it an ego problem? A nerve problem? A fear of failure? And so I think that even the decisions we’re making about the physical are probably rooted in some sort of emotional, psychological lens as well. And oftentimes we’re just really bad at navigating that as endurance athletes.”

Finding Your Gaps

Stachel says that the first thing he does with endurance athletes is to attempt to identify their “gaps” as an individual.

“What are the gaps?” he asks. “They’re personality traits that can be both helpful and hurtful to you as an athlete.”

He imagines an athlete who is “really intense,” saying that can be a good and bad trait, it just depends on the context.

“Sometimes, that’s great,” he says. “It means you show up on time, you do your workouts, you’re driven.”

But that intensity could also hold an athlete back in certain areas. Perhaps they train through injuries or skip rest days. Maybe they dedicate too much time to training and don’t have a social life. Whatever it is, this trait that helps so much in some settings can be detrimental in others, Stachel says.

Someone like this may throw their pacing strategy out the window when they see competitors in their age group fly by them early on in the bike or run. Or perhaps they will convince themselves they cannot spare the thirty seconds it will take to refill their fuel at an aid station, ultimately leading to a bonk. The intensity that served them so well in training is what leads them to bad decision-making and physical issues on race day.

If you can identify these gaps and become aware of them as an athlete, however, you can work to curb them in moments when they are not going to be helpful, therefore giving you the best chance to succeed in racing and training.

Hit the Reset Button

So, you’ve done the work before the race, you’ve looked at your gaps and you have figured out how to work through them. Even with that done, you may still hit a mental wall on race day. What are you supposed to do then? Stachel has some go-to tactics that he used in his own racing career and now recommends to other athletes.

He does note “one caveat” for hitting the wall, and it goes back to pacing and nutrition. He says if you go out too hard, or you mess with your nutrition plan and bonk rather than simply hitting a mental roadblock, then these tips are much less likely to work. (It’s tough for a mental trick to help you overcome empty glycogen stores or burnt-out legs.)

“You need to try to reset when you hit the wall,” Stachel says. “We’ve all been there where we’ve got a race plan and then you get punched in the face. Maybe somebody’s off the front, or something unexpected happened, or it’s hotter than you thought and you just feel flat. Whatever it is, you need to reset.”

The first tip he gives for resetting mentally is to have a “physical cue” that you can implement in the moment. For Stachel, this was undoing his zipper on his tri-suit. Whatever you choose — something with your zipper, flipping your hat around backwards, clapping, or anything else — gives your brain something else to think about for a few seconds, taking your mind off of how terrible you may be feeling in that moment.

“Next you want some sort of breath work,” he says. “Find your breath and breathe your way out of the situation.”

Again, this will give your mind something else to focus on while you box-breathe (breathe out for four seconds, hold for four seconds, breathe in for four seconds and repeat), use the two-to-one method (exhale twice as long as you inhale) or implement any other breathing technique you like. Breath work is an excellent way to relax in any situation, including on the race course.

Finally, Stachel says to ask yourself who you want to be as an athlete.

“When I hit tough moments in races, I reminded myself that I wanted to be the athlete who maximizes his potential,” he says. “I wanted to be the athlete who, no matter what the situation is, got the best out of myself.”

Now, you may want to be the type of athlete who crosses the line first, but that may not always be possible depending on how hard you hit the wall or who else is racing. If you tell yourself, “Figure this out and go win,” it may only beat you down more when you don’t see progress chasing down your competitors. Instead, a mindset like Stachel’s — to get the best out of himself on any given day — is an excellent example of something that is achievable no matter the race conditions. You may not be your best ever, but you can deliver on giving everything you have that day.

This is a quick and simple three-step process that can help you with your reset, whether it’s in the early stages of the bike, in the final miles of the run or at any other point in your race.

Zoom Out

“We want to be able to zoom out in those tough moments, too,” Stachel says. “It’s easy to get tunnel-vision in races. And for a lot of us, you can really shut down if you’re seeing your goal disappear.”

He says this fuels “fear-based thoughts,” such as “I’m going to fail” or “I’m not going to podium” or anything else. If you can “zoom out,” as Stachel says, and get away from that tunnel-vision, you can see that all is not going to be lost just because you missed out on whatever goal you decided to chase before the race.

“I think that any time you’re pushing your limits, whether you’ve done your pacing and nutrition correctly or not, you’re going to risk hitting the wall,” he says. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be a life-shattering revelation when you start to fade in the swim, on the bike or on the run.

Find Acceptance

The final tip Stachel offers comes in the form of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) — a psychotherapy technique that involves intentional action from the individual. He gives the analogy of a door-to-door salesperson arriving at your house and interrupting supper with your family.

“They ring the doorbell and what do you do?” he asks. “You go to the door and you’re like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry, I’m not interested,’ then you go back to the table and forget about it. That’s acceptance and commitment. You accepted the person was there and you commit to coming back to what you’re doing.”

How does this apply to triathlon? The negative thoughts you experience while racing are the same as that salesperson, Stachel says. You cannot stop the salesperson from knocking on your door, just as you can’t prevent negative thoughts from entering your head to tell you you’re going too slowly or that you’re not good enough or that you’re going to fail.

“You can’t stop them, but you can accept them,” Stachel says. “But what do most athletes do? The opposite. They say, ‘You know what? You’re right, there really is something wrong with me and I do really suck.'”

The right approach is to accept that the thoughts will come, but don’t entertain them. Hear them, but don’t listen, and just like the salesperson, you can shut the door on them and carry on with your day.

If you can employ these tips, both before and during your races, you will have much more success climbing over the walls you run into along the way. There is no guarantee that you’ll clear all of them, but you’re going to be much better equipped to handle them when you see them.

To find out more about Stachel and his mental performance coaching services, visit his website here.

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