Scott Fauble gave an eye-opening interview before the 2021 Boston Marathon. He spoke of his struggles with negative thoughts and how a sports psychologist has helped him reframe racing and focus on dividing the race into three distinct phases with “mental cues.”

Transcript

Welcome, let's get started to talk about with something that I heard Scott Fauble, say, the elite runner for NAZ elite. Just prior to running the Boston Marathon, he was being interviewed. And they asked him about how he approached bracing. And he's been very open that Cynthia, the Olympic trials that happened, and he had a performance that was disappointing to him that he's gone through a bit of a run in terms of having confidence in his racing ability and himself as a runner. And he's been going to a lot of sessions with the sports psychologist to kind of help them rebuild that confidence. And one of the things that he has created out of that or taken from that, it's this idea of approaching a race, in this instance, a marathon and dividing it into three stages.

Phase One is all about being smooth and relaxed.

Phase Two, is about having persistence and determination.

Phase Three about having faith in aggression.

And when it comes to the marathon, what he said was that phase one is the first 10 miles zero to 10. It's all about being smooth and relaxed. He didn't specify, but I'm going to say that I think what he meant is phase two is miles 11 through 20. And it's about having persistence and determination. So being smooth and relaxed in the beginning, and then starting to really dial in and being focused and determined on what you're trying to go do for the next 10 miles.

And then phase three is the last six miles. And this is where things get hard. And this is where you have to be have faith in aggression, faith in your training, to date, in aggression, to push the limits, to see what you can go do and to leave it all out there to really have a big race. And I think that's tremendous advice, this idea of dividing the marathon into phases. And you can even think about dividing any race in two phases like that. Whatever the appropriate distances for the different phases. Even when you think about a workout, I think this would be great advice to divide a workout or a long run into those phases like that.

And I think this is great advice I can definitely see this is something that he helped gain by talking to a sports psychologist, this idea of playing these little mind games with yourself to help you go and accomplish your goal and remind you consistently of the work you've done to get to this point, so I thought it was a great interview.

I wish you the best of success today. I wish all runners the best of success today. And yeah, hope this is helpful.