The mental side of racing

Yogi Berra is famously quoted as saying"90% of hitting is 50% mental".I am not sure of the accuracy of those percentages,but the mental aspect of swimming a race is important .What do you do mentally to swim fast?Inquiring minds want to know. I thought I'd get it started by telling about the mental aspect of my 200 M BR from Nats. The morning of the race I was not confident.I had swum the 50 and 100 BR well and still gotten beaten by Robert Wright.Fortunately I have found that confidence is neither necessary nor sufficient to swim fast. I was excited,excitement and anxiety are identical physiologically,it is only a matter of attitude and labeling and I was choosing to label my feeling as excitement I visualize my race for about 30 min before I swim.I found I was having a lot of negative thoughts as I was doing so(it's going to hurt,you're going to go out too hard and die,you're going to go out too slow and embarrass your self,etc.)After each negative thought I would erase it(literally visualize taking an eraser to the thought and replace it with a positive thought,such as you will swim with easy speed,you will feel smooth and powerful,etc.)I kept having the recurrent thought I needed to "swim hard",but I realized I did not want to swim hard,I wanted to swim fast. At SCY Nats I had gone out too slowly in the 200 yd BR and could not catch the leaders,so I made it a conscious thought that I would not let Robert get too far ahead.This was a potentially dangerous decision because if he went out too fast we could both die the last 50,but I figured"no guts,no glory." I have very few conscious thoughts during a race,which is strange since my mind won't shut up the rest of the time.On the block I try to focus only on being ready for the beep.In the air on the startIi remember thinking"good start"(I felt I had been slow off the block in the 100 BR.) I count every stroke in practice so I always have a preconscious count going in my head.That was to prove useful in this race.At the first turn Robert was a little ahead,but my stroke count was 17(I don't count the pull out) so I thought"I'm a little behind and my stroke count is only 17,I'm right where I want to be." My second 50 stroke count was 20 and I was even with Robert so I began to feel a little optimistic(not confident,just a little optimistic.) With about 3 strokes left in the 3rd 50 I felt tired.I think this is where training is very important,because I had a lot of experience swimming tired,so I (mostly) took it as information instead of a reason to slow down.My stroke count for the 50 was 21 1/2(yes I took a 1/2 stroke into the wall,no that is not a good thing,being tired was a little distracting.)I was ahead at that point,my stroke count was still good and I started to feel a little more optimistic. In retrospect what was conspicuous in it's absence the last 50 was feeling tired.I have had times in a SCY 200 BR where I come up on the last turn and the wall seems miles away.This time I came up saw the wall and thought"only one more length,you can do this." In the 100 I was ahead of Robert at the turn and never saw him and yet he touched first.I knew better than to look,so I just assumed he was speeding up and swam as fast as I could. When I hit the wall I looked over at Robert's lane first.He was there,but had he just gotten there?Had I won.I looked at the scoreboard and saw a 1 next to my name,so I had a wave of exultation,but the time didn't make sense.I had been pretty consistently swimming 2:52 in major LCM meets for years(when I wasn't slower.)I figured Robert would be 2:51.I hoped he would swim a high 2:51 as I thought if everything went right I maybe could beat that. The time said 2:50.44,I knew that couldn't be right.I heard the announcer say that the World Record had been broken.I thought,"sure the world record was 2:50.77 so 2:50.44 broke it."Only then did it make sense,2:50.44 broke the world record,2:50.44 was next to my name,#1 was next to my name,therefore I had broken the world record.The logic was flawless.At that point I pulled myself out of the pool and although I was too exhausted to stand I was so excited I don't think my feet touched the ground. I feel I have to say one of the great things about Masters is that while we are competitors we are also friends.I couldn't have gone nearly that fast without Robert and. That is my story,what is yours?