You may be thinking about your first ultra endurance event*, ironman triathlon, adventure race, Etape du tour or ultra marathon. Amazing, that just off the top of my head I came up with quite a solid list of events, which are designed to test the limits of human endurance! What’s even more amazing is that these events are not just completed by superhuman elites, they are completed by you and your buddy in the office working 40–50 hrs a week and hey, no afternoon snoozing! That’s superhuman. [*Ultra endurance is determined as an event lasting longer than four hours.]

You constantly hear coaches, parents, and athletes talk about the 'winning mentality or ‘winning at all costs’. However you put it, it's setting the athlete up, if they are not always first, to become a loser. If you are not first or a winner then, by definition, you are a loser. Don't get me wrong, I want the athletes I coach to be picking up first place and gold medals as that can be their reward for the hard yards and performing optimally. But it is precisely not having the 'winning' mindset that will enable them to achieve this. By setting out to win or to beat others, you're setting the benchmark by something uncontrollable.