Another comment on David Wottle's 1972 Olympic gold medal race I posted above. I had never heard or seen it until I took a sports psychology course in college. They played it with commentary by Wottle. He talked about how he broke the race down into small achievable goals: just get in contact with the rest of the field, just pick off that last guy, just pick off another guy, just pick off another guy, etc. With those goals he was able to position himself to finally be right where he wanted to be at about 180 meters because he always had an impressive kick. It says a lot about how you develop mental toughness and deal with adversity.
Interesting note, Wottle was a career miler. He only ran the 800 in prep for qualifying for the Olympics that year and went back to his mile exclusively pretty much as soon as he got back from the Olympics that year.