» Ted with his son, Gary, and wife, Ruth, after the Olympic Trials marathon in Yonkers, New York, in 1956.

pile, I found his Olympic uniform. I just lost it.” At the funeral, Gary recalled that, as a child, he read his father’s daily training logs instead of comic books. As a child, he and his mother went to the Yonkers Marathon, where Gary handed out water to the runners and always waited for his dad at the finish line. He spoke about his mother, Ruth, and how she and Ted were true soul mates. “She understood his gift and gave him his freedom to use it,” he said. He recalled as a child seeing runners at the apartment who came in for races. Some stayed for a day, some for weeks, and one runner stayed for an entire year. He likened his mother to Jessie Kelley, the late wife of John J. Kelley, as the women behind the legends who held it all together.

Gary will spend most of 2008 holding celebrations in honor of his father, some public and some personal—such as running his first Boston Marathon and joining the annual 32-mile Run Around Manhattan in January, an event organized by Dave Obelkevich, an ultrarunner friend of Ted’s. “This was the first time Ted wasn’t at 228th and Broadway to greet us,” said Obelkevich. Gary will have to make decisions on donating his father’s writings, trophies, and other valuable belongings. After speaking to Ted’s friends at the wake and funeral, some of whom he didn’t know, Gary was touched at the impact his father had on so many people.

Joe Perez summed up the legacy of Ted when he spoke at the funeral. He asked all to rise and raise their hands high in a celebratory gesture to Ted, and said: “We are here to celebrate the greatness of Ted. Do not mourn, as he has not left us. He lives on in our hearts. He was a prince among men in this life, and now he is head coach of God’s running team. Honor him by trying to follow in the footprints he left behind.”

The world will be a better place if we can indeed strive to follow Ted’s i lead.

Sweat Is Not Enough

Mental Preparation for Better Running on Race Day.

ours upon hours are spent preparing for races. Miles are run. Intervals are

timed, and for many, the cross-training hours are also logged. However, sweat is not enough to maximize your potential on race day. Planning is one of the often-forgotten skills that allow each runner to toe the line with confidence on race day. Yet, planning or preparing a routine seems to be a lost art for race preparation. We’ re not talking about the physical warm-up and cool-down; sweat is not enough. Rather, we’re referring to mental and emotional preparation for races.

The unconscious (or “I don’t really need to think about it”) approach to mental and emotional readiness does not permit anyone to put his best foot forward. Honing and honoring mental and emotional aspects of performance make your target of peak performance a much larger one. Honoring the mental and emotional facets of performance is nota difficult task. With practice, anyone can master these skills and consequently perform better and more consistently. Often, it becomes obvious how important mental and emotional training is only when something goes wrong.

We encourage athletes to establish three warm-up routines to prepare for all possible scenarios: an ideal warm-up, a warm-up for which there is little time to prepare, and an extended warm-up for when competition has been delayed. It is important to be prepared for each of these contingencies because when athletes are surprised, they are a second behind or completely out of sync. A prerace routine increases the likelihood of performing at peak levels. The following will walk you through ways to build a prerace routine that fits your individual needs. For ease of illustration, we will separate the physical, mental, and emotional preparation, yet we encourage you to tie them together in your own prerace routine.

THE PRERACE WARM-UP

Part of any prerace routine involves a physical warm-up, with which most of you are familiar. It will be important to examine your training routine and establish how much time is optimal for stretching and putting your heart rate in its target

zone. Take the time to think about what you do for a physical warm-up and how much time it takes to complete this phase of race preparation. Additional questions you might ask yourself include some of the following:

How much stretching is enough for you?

What meals and snacks are planned?

Have you considered your fluid intake during prerace preparations?

How much sleep do you need in the day leading up to the competition?

Remember, sweat is not enough. You must also attend to mental preparations before toeing the line. While most of you would consider some portion of your races mental, adequate time often is not allocated to formal mental training. We contend that by asking some simple questions of yourself and putting some easily learned skills to practice, you will be far stronger on race day.

How do you talk to yourself on race day? Is your self-dialogue filled with anxious tones, negative prophesies, and the agony of defeat? If it is, you can predict how you will perform—not as well as you could!

To put it quite simply, how you think affects how you feel and how you perform. Thus, allocating some time in your prerace warm-up to check in and assess how you talk to yourself becomes imperative. If you sense a negative tone, look to change the language to more positive or realistic phrases, such as “T’m nervous, but that’s my body’s way of preparing to compete. It’s natural,” or “T’m relaxed and focused.” Be creative with how you change these thoughts, but do not let the negative thoughts cycle over and over in your consciousness. To do so is comparable to self-handicapping, a process by which negative thoughts or behaviors bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. We have found it helpful to have athletes prepare more positive, alternative thoughts ahead of time for some of their most common negative statements.

Other mental aspects of a prerace warm-up include focus, or concentration. Do you have it or not? To perform anywhere in life you have to be focused, and when you are at your best, you find a cocoon of concentration. Having a plan for your prerace warm-up can ease your expenditure of energy and better prepare you for the tasks at hand.

To be fully within your cocoon of concentration, you must create calm with a relaxed body and an alert mind. We often suggest using simple meditation techniques to conserve energy and mimic skills that will be needed during the race. Being attentive to the cues that are most important and letting go of those that are not is useful. For example, focusing on the starter and blocking out the sounds of fans cheering for other runners will contribute to running your race.

Additionally, some athletes we’ve worked with find their minds wandering to unrelated concerns before and during competition. One simple question we ask athletes is “Where are your eyes?” By focusing their eyes to the racecourse, preparation tasks, or opponents, they are already well on their way to better focus.

RUN THE RACE IN YOUR MIND FIRST

Can you see yourself running the race as you want to? Being able to use your mental power to see yourself perform well in your mind is very influential to your performance. Using imagery, or controlled daydreaming, during training and during warm-up on race day can help relaxation, hasten learning, increase your confidence, and improve preparation. From a neurological perspective, seeing truly is believing. When you engage in imagery, it stimulates areas of the brain that are involved in learning and the action of performing a task. At a basic neurological level, the mind does not know the difference between what you imagine and what is real! Thus, when you use mental imagery, you affirm that you can execute the skills essential to success.

All too often, emotional preparation is ignored, to the detriment of athletes. How often do you check your emotional state before the gun goes off? When you are at your best, you are tapping into a whole host of positive emotions, such as excitement, energy, and the sense that you are having fun. To perform at your best, you need to be able to evoke these emotions even if you don’t necessarily feel that way at the moment. Negative emotions can hurt performance because they create muscle tension and burn energy. While negative emotions such as anger can sometimes motivate you, the motivation is fleeting.