With four global medals in the 1500 meters (including her bronze at the 2016 Olympics in Rio), 11 national titles, and a handful of American records on her résumé, Jenny Simpson is one of the most successful track athletes in U.S. track history. She recently ran the second-fastest women’s mile in American history, clocking a 4:17.30 on July 22 in London.
Her success can be attributed to a talented mix of speed, endurance, and tenacity, as well as her highly regimented routine and positive outlook. She’ll conclude her season with a 1,500-meter race at the Diamond League finals on August 31 in Brussels and she has a chance to win the 5th Avenue Mile in New York City for the seventh consecutive year on September 9.
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We caught up with the New Balance-sponsored pro to distill four key pillars of her success that you can use in your training, racing, and general approach to running.
Make Your Rituals Become Routine
Simpson admits that she occasionally deals with a lot of the same frustrations that every runner deals with: fatigue, soreness, wavering motivation, and feeling out of shape after taking a break.
The keys to counteracting these feelings, she says, are planning the rest of your activities around your running, focusing on your strengths, and reducing or mastering the parts that are constantly a challenge. (Maybe you should try a bullet journal.)
“I think that transformation from ritual to routine is what makes running really a real pleasure, something that’s really special for people for their entire lives,” Simpson says. “Running is one of those things that can engage people for a lifetime. A lot of people love to run, even though they aren’t as fast as they used to be and they can’t do all the things they used to do, and I absolutely get it.”
If you’re a morning person, that might mean getting up at sunrise to run. If you like running with others, it will entail developing good running partners. If you like running fast, it will mean enduring hard workouts once or twice a week—no matter the weather. On the contrary, if you always feel like you’re not quite fit enough, it might mean following a training plan and hiring a coach to guide you.
Trust the Process
On race days, Simpson methodically writes out a down-to-the-minute schedule of where she will be and what she’ll be doing. Knowing she needs to adhere to such a regimented schedule allows her to ignore any distractions or lingering nervousness before an important set of races, like the U.S. Olympic Track Trials. For you, that might mean making a checklist that includes everything from planning your prerace dinner and breakfast to organizing your gear and pinning your pin on your shirt the night before the race.
“My personality type is about being disciplined, and if I have a set schedule and I’m more focused on meeting those incremental goals, then I can kind of ignore the emotional side of things, like the nervous stress before a race,” Simpson says.
Related: Learn how to make your miles more efficient so you can run stronger in less time with Run Less, Run Faster.
On the opposite end, if being structured or disciplined makes you so nervous you can’t sleep or it upsets your stomach, then try a looser approach that still allows you to trust your own process.
This also means sticking to your goals and your plan, albeit with some flexibility when things go astray. “You’re going to have good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments,” she says. “But during the low points, you must understand that you’ll go back up to that level, too. By trusting the process over time, it’s going to lead you in a positive direction to your ultimate goal, no matter what happens along the way.”
Be Brave
In international track meets, every competitor is required to gather in a “call room” under the grandstands for an athlete-only meeting with officials about 25 minutes before the start of a race.
Since she was in college, Simpson has used those prerace moments to galvanize herself for what will follow, reassuring herself that she’s optimally prepared because of the training she’s endured. It’s no different than what you might feel as you approach the starting corral of your next half marathon or marathon.
“I think when an athlete goes into the call room, they either think to themselves ‘I’m really glad I’m me, or they wish they were someone else,’ because you’re facing your competitors, and it’s a really intense and heightened experience,” she says. “I told myself long ago that I’d always want to walk into that room, no matter what, and say, ‘I’d rather be me’ in the moments before a race.”
It’s having the mantra in your mind that “you are ready,” and it helps to have conviction and really own it.
Always Finish Strong
Do you know that depleted feeling near the end of a race when you’re so exhausted you feel like you’ll never get there? Yeah, Simpson knows all about that, too. But throughout her career, both at the University of Colorado and as a pro, she’s always been known for having a fierce finishing kick and being able to close out a race.
Simpson says it’s both a physical and mental endeavor to finish strong, one that takes a premeditated commitment to make it happen.
For Simpson, it’s about having a bold sense that she’s getting ready to leave no survivors at the end. For you, it’s having the firm resolve that you can dig deep and finish your run as strong as possible, knowing you can temporarily overcome fatigue, self-doubt, what your stomach feels like, how fast or slow others are running alongside you, and other negative detractors.
“I think it’s so much more than just wanting it badly,” Simpson says. “You have to be prepared for that moment and train yourself to be fit enough to be able to run hard over the last portion of the race.”
Add in all the other steps that got you to the starting line feeling confident—committing to the race months ago, early morning jaunts, achingly hard speed sessions, and exhausting long runs on weekends—then it will be an easier decision to leave it all out there for the end of your race.
