TRIATHLON - Playing mind games

Whangarei triathlete Sam Warriner is ranked third in the world, but will Olympic race pressure mess with her head? Advocate sports editor Tim Eves engages in some sports psychology before the athlete chases gold on Monday AT THIS point, the biggest hurdle between Sam Warriner and an Olympic triathlon medal is in her head.
Her presence as one of the pre-race medal contenders on the start line at the Ming Tomb Reservoir north of Beijing on Monday comes thanks to an 18-month build up that always had the world's biggest sports party as the goal.
It is now the mental demons that might trip Warriner up on the biggest sports stage of them all.
For her, performing in the bubble of a training session or actual competition is easy to replicate.
But you can't rehearse the weight of public and personal expectation on the start line at Beijing. ' That is partly why the Olympic Games makes for such intense human drama.
The trick now, says sports psychologist Dr Jane Magnusson, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, is to dictate the mind games. Common strategies include repeating pre-race routines and visualisation.
But the mind can still play some nasty tricks in situations such as these.
A lot of what makes the difference between who can or can't cope or who does or doesn't is not the pressure that they are under but how they manage it.
Tackling it on a mental level, is important, Dr Magnusson said.
Ideally, especially in elite performances, they will have created competition routines and rehearsed the regime to the point that when they reach the starting point they are as close to the optimal state as possible, she said.
Pre-competition routines normalise things, but not to the point where the athletes are not aware of the environment they are in, so that the actual competition then has a positive effect on them, not a negative one.
Not that any of this will be new to Warriner. In a career that has included the high of a Commonwealth Games silver in Melbourne and the low of implosion at a national trial in Australia five years ago, Warriner has learned how to deal with her own mental demons. But dealing and conquering are two different animals altogether.
Dr Magnusson's answer: From a sports psychology perspective, first and foremost, pressure is a perception.
Warriner's perception is that she needs to avoid the pressure.
She doesn't like distractions. In the final countdown to a major race, Warriner can be easily flustered by the minutiae of life and often needs reassurance for the simple things. Doubts can flood in and paralyse her ability to reason. Result: A media lock-down from Warriner 12-days before her Beijing appointment.
But, like all athletes operating in the heady atmosphere of international success, when the starter's gun fires, life is simple, and when it gets simple, Warriner is one of the toughest competitors to crack.
That strong mental application can be personified by Warriner's ability to train with a single-minded focus that could melt an iceberg. Triathlon requires a combination of speed and endurance that can only be accomplished by churning out tedious hours of repetitive training. Hours in the pool with a black line as a visual stimulant. Running solo for long arduous sessions on the road, one tedious stride after another. On the bike, as an example, Warriner can churn out 15-20 hours a week.
These are the hours where Warriner demonstrates her true mental strength. These are the hours that have transformed Warriner into a Beijing medal contender.
Question: So on those long training sessions, say a two-hour bike ride, you must surely have visions of winning a gold medal. Is that what gets you through? Warriner: You do have moments when your mind strays and you think what it would be like to win a medal. But then I always snap myself out of that and go back to each pedal stroke, making sure it is the best it can be and my technique; how am I sitting on the bike, is my posture right, am I riding efficiently. That is what gets me through a long session, by breaking it down to the little things that matter. Letting my mind wander is not going to help me achieve my goal, but doing the little things right will.
Question: You don't see yourself winning the medal? You can't hear the commentary?
Warriner: Well it does happen, but I do honestly snap myself back to the now by thinking "what was that pedal stroke like".
It is a method she says she has used ever since she started clocking up massive running miles in a regime designed by her Whangarei-based coach Murray Healey to follow a style akin to that championed by Arthur Lydiard.
At the peak of her "base phase" Warriner was knocking out 100km a week running.
Her "little things" mindset was also underlined when she discovered herself training alongside the Athens Olympic women's triathlon champion Kate Allen while in Cheju.
"I talked to Kate about what it was like winning an Olympic medal and she talked about how good it felt to win but then talked about how doing those little things were so important. That was kind of reassuring for me, I mean she has won an Olympic gold medal."
So Warriner, ranked third in the world, has belief in her own training regime.
She is one of only five others in the field capable of running 10km under 34 minutes. Healey has long held the belief that the Olympic gold medallist will run a 34 minute 10km split in Beijing. Anything else will not be climbing the medal dais.
"Sam has run 33.30s in training, but from what we can work out, with the course and the conditions at Beijing we think the winning run time will be around the 34m 30s mark. Nobody has gone under 34 minutes this year and it won't happen in the conditions we are anticipating in Beijing," Healey said.
"It has been very hard yards lately. When the going starts to get tough that's when Sam does well. The longer, harder races are her forte and that's why the course on Monday suits her.
"When it comes down to the business Sam will know she has worked as hard if not harder so, come race time, she knows it is do-able. Our swim to bike sessions have been designed so that Sam can get on her bike and go mental for 15 to 20 minutes if she needs to."
So what of her main rivals on Monday?
There are two major contenders - Portuguese superstar Vanessa Fernandez and the Australian Emma Snowsill, a kiwi-born dynamo who has been so focussed on adding an Olympic success to her Melbourne Commonwealth Games gold that she has hardly been seen on the world circuit this season.
"I think it is going to come down to how the teams from the USA, Canada and England work. They will be trying to split the field on the swim then work together on the bike. It is likely they will take someone like Fernandez with them but Snowsill and Warriner will be together in the swim and how that plays out is crucial," Healey said.
Anything more than 20 seconds ahead at the start of the run, Sam will be racing for a bronze medal.
Beijing looms as her last big showdown, her last chance to enjoy the big stage.
Now matter how you might perceive it, that's pressure.