It can often be the biggest challenge as a Coach, to help an athlete stay concentrated on their journey and not focused on what others are doing. Athletes can easily be lead, or swayed based on what another athlete is doing (or not doing).
Yet they seem to forget that every athlete has a different skill set. Every athlete has a different athletic ability, a different background, a different home life/dynamic and different goals.
By all means use others to push you when your session asks you to be pushed. Use others to help drive you, or stay focused, or help you get out of the bed in the morning. But when YOU need to go easy. Go easy. When YOUR session asks you to focus on YOUR aerobic endurance, focus on that. It is there for YOUR purpose and for YOUR progression.
And so this is why it is so important to not focus on others, but to look inwards. Remind yourself of your goals, your purpose, yourself… ‘Look in the mirror. That’s your competition…’
The key is CONSISTENCY over TIME – what you do in one particular session, or one particular week is not going to make or break your season / key race. BUT what you do week in, week out, CONSISTENLY, with PURPOSE, and PROGRESSION is what will help you get to your best performance potential come race day. And you can only do that when you are training for YOU.
So don’t worry about what others are doing. Don’t worry that you are doing less, or more, or different than them. Because you ARE different…. And that’s the amazing thing about you. 
