June 28 to 30, 2024
We’re now 6 months away from the big departure! It’s January, the new year, and we’re starting (or restarting) our preparations… And as usual, we’re committed to providing you with all the keys to help you get ready on D-day!
We’ve often given advice on training plans, physical preparation, nutrition, equipment… but we haven’t talked much about a central element in the success of a race like the MB Race: your head!
And yes, mental preparation must be an integral part of your training, because to complete the 140km, the legs obviously count, but if the head doesn’t keep up, you may not get very far… So we discussed the subject with Renaud Blanc, 11th in the MB Race in 2022, member of the MB Race team and mental coach.
Renaud will give you the keys to getting started with mental preparation. But keep in mind that not all the answers will be in this article, and that it’s a unique process, specific to each individual.
Let’s go!
Of course, a race like the MB Ultra Somfy requires physical preparation equal to the challenge: you need endurance, strength and concentration. But to unleash your energy to the full, you need your head to run as smoothly as your legs.
In fact, a malfunctioning brain consumes up to 20% of glucose and 80% of oxygen, even though it represents only 2-3% of our total body mass. On an effort as long as the MB Ultra, you can imagine the loss of performance and energy caused by your head, even though your physical preparation went perfectly… We’ve all experienced a race where we felt great on the big day, and yet the final result didn’t live up to expectations. Precisely because these expectations were too strong, too projected even before the start, making the body tight, tense, stressed…
The principle of mental preparation is that if an athlete manages his energy, emotions and self-esteem well, he will find himself in his fluidity zone and will be able to perform, i.e. unleash his potential and give the best of himself.
More than a training plan, it’s a method based on the control of three parameters: energy – emotions – self-esteem. The idea is to give athletes the tools they need to express themselves without restraint. After an initial performance evaluation test, we identify the work areas to be prioritized according to one of these three parameters. Nous ne sommes pas tous égaux face à la gestion de ces paramètres : on a tous des capacités intrinsèques différentes mais aussi eu une éducation différente, des valeurs différentes, des croyances fortes ou limitantes…
We’re all unique when it comes to something we want to achieve. Some will manage their emotions better, but their self-esteem less well, and vice versa… The method takes around 10 to 14 months, depending on the individual, to work its way through, and to be able to assemble as regularly as possible the ingredients needed to be in the fluidity zone, and therefore in the performance zone.
Mental preparation is therefore more a question of day-to-day work than a multi-month plan. Rather, it’s a matter of getting the athlete to know himself better, so he can better listen to himself and make decisions on the big day. By this we mean that an athlete who knows how to listen to himself, respect his body and what he asks of it will be more liberated and therefore more successful. The idea is to develop an emotional intelligence that will enable you, little by little, to put yourself in the best possible mental frame of mind so as to let your physical capacities express themselves freely and mobilize only the muscles necessary for performance.
The trick with the MB Ultra Somfy is to make a mountain out of a molehill. The brain is flexible, it’s not set in stone. This means it can take the best and the worst to feed itself…
The challenge is to desacralize the race and break it down into several efforts. If we send the signal to the brain of the whole 140KM/7000M D+ block, it will panic. It’s better to tell him that it’s 70 + 30 + 40 and to take them as they come, according to the moment.
The first mental error with the MB Race comes at registration, when you naturally set yourself the GOAL of being a finisher. But goal = pressure! And that implies stess, constraint, obligation, control…
Without being able to develop the whole method and give all the keys in a single article, the main thing to remember is that you need to mentally minimize such a race in order to free the brain from any unnecessary pressure beforehand. You can envisage 1,000 race scenarios, but the only result will be to make you tense and nervous, because nobody knows the real scenario.
In the run-up to the race, all you need to do is prepare your physical training plan, your bike, your nutrition plan, your overall race strategy… but never set yourself the goal of being a finisher. The more pressure you put on yourself to be a finisher, the more unattainable this ambition (not goal) will become. Because ambition is willpower, as opposed to a goal, which translates into pressure. Ambition is like saying I want to, I’m in control, but it’s all based on the present moment… Thinking like this will allow you to let your body and head rest, stay focused on your physical and material preparations and keep your head fresh.
As I said before, on D-day you need a fresh head! To have a fresh head, you shouldn’t set yourself any goals, not even the goal of being a finisher, and manage your race in the present moment. In other words, by managing according to your energy at the time, your emotions at the time, your self-esteem at the time.
There are mornings when, despite a full night’s sleep, you wake up tired, and science can’t explain that. Keep in mind that this can happen to you on the morning of the MB Ultra and you won’t even know it the night before…
But if the physical preparation has been good over the preceding months, then this gives the certainty, the good self-esteem, that with good mental management on race day, the body will be able to give the energy needed to achieve a full race.
To achieve a full race, you need to be at the starting line, not give in to pressure or fear, to do this, I encourage you to perform the following breathing process three times: inhale deeply through the nose, hold for 10 seconds and exhale slowly and continuously through the mouth. This process brings fresh air to the brain, secretes waste products during the 10 seconds (mainly CO2), inhibits parasitic thoughts and evacuates them during exhalation. This stops the panic/fear/excitement process and brings blood pressure down. As a result, the body is more relaxed and the brain more available and focused. He will then be more attuned to the sensations sent back by his body, and better able to make the right decisions to go all the way (eating, slowing down, speeding up, getting dressed to warm up, etc.).
Being a finisher of the MB Ultra Somfy is not about trying to be stronger than your body and not listening to it. On the contrary, it means putting them at the center of all our attention, and constantly questioning and respecting them to find out what state they’re in. And trust me, it will repay you in kind by getting you through the finish arch within the time limit. And even if you don’t succeed this year, it will give you a very good base of sensations and experience from which to draw the positive and come back the following year!
Now that you have the first keys to approaching mental preparation, it’s up to you to add it to your training plan. And we hope to see you back on the starting line in June!
And if you haven’t signed up yet, now’s the time!
And if you want to know more about mental preparation, do not hesitate to contact Renaud Blanc – renaudblanc72@gmail.com
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