Halle Hamilton: Running the Mental Race

Everything you do seems great until it’s compared to someone better, faster, slimmer, prettier, more athletic, attending a better college, or in a better place. These comparisons can feel all-consuming, replacing every happy thought and manipulating every moment to make you feel unworthy.

Comparison has always been my biggest enemy, my toughest competitor, and the one thing I cannot outrun.

When I started competing in collegiate athletics, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. As a runner, experiencing ups and downs in my career was inevitable. Not competing the way I wanted to, I began asking myself what my competitors had over me. But as a college athlete, especially as a freshman, I wasn't giving myself the grace to overcome life's new changes like moving away from my family, changing my eating habits, sleeping in a dorm room, making new friends, etc. I just thought college was going to equate to instant results, instant personal records. I was wrong!

I began to compare my body to other athletes'.

“If I could just lose a few pounds, I would be faster.”

Eating became an overwhelming source of guilt tied to every meal. It became an obsession of counting calories, comparing my portions to my friends, and feeling horrible with myself when I would not eat enough and then overeat later on. It was a vicious cycle that drained my energy, consumed my thoughts, and created anxiety. I knew my relationship with food became really unhealthy when I began to feel the need to calculate all the calories of each meal and keep it in my notes app. Every time I ate a meal, I couldn't get away from thinking of calories. I found myself looking at how many calories were in each granola bar, dreading seeing an item on a dinner menu that was above 600 calories, and creating foods I genuinely feared being around because of my lack of self-control. In my head, I convinced myself that every meal should be 500 calories, and every time I went over that, I felt so defeated and disgusted with the person I was becoming. I would go to each and every practice, and the only thing on my mind would be how I can suck in my stomach enough to look like the other girls. I felt as if I was the biggest girl on our squad, by a margin, and that no matter what I did, my teammates were this perfect weight that I couldn't attain. I wanted out of this cage, where I could just eat regularly again, but I seemed to forget how.

The little habits I was creating began to bleed into other areas of my life that I deeply valued. While I have many hobbies and traits that shape who I am, my passion for track surpasses them all, making it a central part of my life. It is rarely discussed how struggling on the track can affect your life. The worse I did, the less confident I became, the less competitive I became, the more I settled, the more I told myself I was okay with the times I was running, and the more I accepted mediocrity, something I have never been okay with.

The feeling of not contributing to the team made me feel less respectable as an athlete, a teammate, and quite literally as a person.

Once I started to accept in my mind that I was no longer competitive, I sabotaged all possibilities of reaching my full potential. I would accept that I wasn't going to perform well before the gun even went off. I had lost the mental battle before my feet ever hit the start line.

This was not the person I am. I have always been extremely competitive, so I knew things needed to change before I self-sabotaged all the passion I had for this sport. I needed to start prioritizing falling in love with the process again, not only focusing on the results. I needed to remember how much I enjoyed pushing myself in every workout. I needed to shift my mentality and begin celebrating every small mental victory I came across to start rebuilding my mental toughness and competitive spirit. If I kept comparing my failures to my friends and teammates, envy would consume me, and I would no longer be the supportive teammate I used to love being. I wanted to be happy for my teammates' success, but I felt overwhelmingly jealous because I wasn't succeeding.

However, over time and to this day, I continue to believe that personal success should not be compared to other individuals. I'm not running anyone else's race but my own.

Track is 100% mental. You can be in peak physical condition, but if you're not mentally stable, it won't translate to performance on the track. For that reason alone, I was drawn to this sport. However, like anything else in life, mental blocks exist. Self-sabotaging exists. Losing your confidence exists. Comparison exists.

By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, I realized that so much of my identity was tied to convincing people that I am a good athlete, and when I felt like I wasn't performing, the earth collapsed beneath my feet.

I realized that people aren't as obsessed with my life as I made them out to be. Nobody was searching up my races, stalking my times, or hoping I would fail. And if they were, so what? As eye-opening as this was, I began to see that I needed to start running for myself and not the people around me. I needed to let go of the egotistical habits that had driven me for so long and focus on appreciating what is right in front of me. The world won't end if I don't achieve a personal best, and it certainly won't change if I do. Moving forward, I want to soak up and enjoy everything track has given and taught me over the years: endless support, discipline, lifelong friends, and core memories. Track and field has always filled my glass up, and I intend to keep it that way.

Moving forward, it is easier for me to tackle these issues knowing that I am not the only one who faces these challenges, but I have to make a conscious effort to do so every day. Talking about my mental health and bringing light to what I face has helped push me in the right direction.