Many athletes experience race anxiety in the days and weeks before a key race, their first race, or maybe any race at all.
These feelings can be overwhelming and overpowering, and unfortunately a certain extent of them can negatively affect your race.
No one wants to train hard for weeks or months and show up physically ready, only for your brain to get in the way of your success.
So what can you do?
1. Look back at your training to remind yourself how ready you are.
Reviewing all of the training sessions you’ve done in recent weeks is a good way to remind yourself that you’ve put in the training and you’re ready for this race.
Look at your key sessions, remember how strong you felt, and observe how far you’ve come.
You’re going in as prepared as you can be, and you can do this.
2. Don’t ignore the “what ifs;” respond to them.
“What if I get punched in the face during the swim?” I’ll stop to fix my goggles and keep swimming.
“What if I get a flat tire on the bike?” I’ll change it and keep riding.
“What if I cramp on the run?” I’ll take some fluid and electrolytes, stretch, walk if necessary, and keep moving forward.
Talk through it with yourself, come up with an answer for each scenario, and then move on.
3. BREATHE.
Practice a breathing technique. One example is to inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold again for four seconds, and repeat for a few minutes or cycles.
Breathing impacts the nervous system, and in turn the muscles and the brain, and in turn the stress and anxiety you’re feeling. It may not banish all anxious thoughts, but it does a lot behind the scenes to relax your entire body, so it helps more than you think.
Practice this daily leading up to your race, or anytime you start to feel overwhelmed by negative thoughts.
4. Stay in the moment.
Focus on RIGHT NOW, and what you can control. What can you do in this moment to ensure success to the best of your ability?
Maybe that’s going to sleep early a few nights before the race. Maybe that’s making a list of everything you’ll need to bring to the race. Maybe that’s repeating mantras that you’ll tell yourself during each portion of the race (and doing this during the race itself, too).
Keep yourself in the present moment, because that’s what you can control.
5. Visualize the race.
Go through the race in your mind from start to finish. Picture yourself executing, feeling strong, getting across the finish line.
In doing so, you’ll reinforce a positive mindset – again, that you can do this and you WILL do this.
6. Reflect on the process it took to get here, instead of focusing on the outcome of the race.
When I was training for my first Ironman, I was afraid I would put in all of this training and somehow not be able to complete the race. I feared all of my work would be for nothing and that it would be a failure.
A few weeks before the race, I biked 100 miles as my longest training ride, and that night, I had a revelation: even if I couldn’t complete the Ironman, the journey was still worth it, because I had already accomplished so much. I’d just ridden 100 MILES. Before that, I’d ridden 90, and 80, and 70, and 60, and each of those was a brand new accomplishment on the bike every week.
I realized that the journey itself was what brought me joy, I had already succeeded, and no negative race outcome would take that away.
Think about the process, your new accomplishments, your long training sessions, your great workouts. The outcome of race day can’t take these from you.
7. Remember your “why.”
Why do you do this sport?
Chances are, it’s not solely for the one moment you cross a finish line.
Think about why you’re doing this, what you enjoy about training, what keeps you going, and bring that with you to the race.
Remember, having SOME nerves before your race is okay; it could get the adrenaline going and give that final push to outrace your competitors or achieve a PR!
If it’s overwhelming, or has negatively affected your performance in the past, give these tips a try!
Like many things in life, taming race anxiety is easier said than done. But it’s worth a shot, and it’ll get easier with practice.
Happy racing!
-Dina
Dina Grimaldi is a triathlon & nutrition coach who helps athletes reach their goals while finding the balance they need to fit training comfortably into their lives, and who guides and supports those with nutrition or health goals to cultivate a lifestyle of sustainable habits and a healthy relationship with food.