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Question: I hear athletes talk about “the zone.” What is it and how do you get
there?
Answer: The zone is a mindset, a mental space, where your focus is totally in the moment.
The opposite of the zone is when you focus on outcomes and results—how many points you’ve got, how many baskets you’ve scored, your time, etc. The zone is probably where most great performances take place. To increase the chances of being in the zone, let outcomes be the byproduct of focusing on specific strategies and skills. Focus on your stride, your stroke, your
cadence—whatever you can do in the moment. This can work for anyone, even national champions.
For instance, when I deal with Regina Jacobs (a top middle-distance runner), I tell her, “You need to come up with four things to pay attention to while you’re running.” These tend to be things like stride length, facial relaxation, and so on.
Question: I’m in my 50s. I haven’t improved my 10K time in 10 years. Have I run my fastest race?
Answer: Physiology research tells us that we lose a mere 5 percent of our speed over a
10-year period—if we did nothing to change our training. So, if your 10K time was 40 minutes 10 years ago, your time today would be 42 minutes. But you can counteract that loss through diet, mental training such as visualization, and improved training methods such as greater rest
periods followed by high-intensity workouts. With this in mind, you could very well be in for the
best race ever. It happened to me. When I hit my 40s, I thought I would never break my marathon PR
of 2 hours, 30 minutes. But I changed my training and my diet, and at age 41 I ran a 2:26. If you
have a deep desire to improve, there are things you can do. Your best race might still be in
you.
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