Pre-race anxiety is one of the most common experiences for runners. Even professional runners experience it and have to learn to deal with anxiety. Many runners think they need to get rid of it completely and to be calm and focused on race day. What many runners don’t realize is that anxiety isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s natural, and there are ways to use it to improve performance. Although many athletes deal with it, and understanding how to manage it can turn your pre-race nerves into a performance booster.
What is pre-race anxiety?
Pre-race anxiety is the nervousness you feel before a race, usually one you’ve been training for months to run. When all that preparation comes down to one moment, it can feel overwhelming, especially if you don’t know how to handle the worrying thoughts. Anxiety tends to trigger a physical reaction: your heart rate rises, your muscles tense up, and your breathing becomes rapid, triggering a fight or flight response and causing you to panic.
London, Ont.’s Natascha Wesch, who is a certified mental health professional specializing in sports psychology, says there are two reasons why your anxiety surfaces on race day: the importance of the event to you and the uncertainty of the outcome. “If it’s important to you, you are going to experience anxiety; that’s just natural,” Wesch said. “Then there’s uncertainty, not knowing what’s going to happen after the race starts (which can be scary).”
Anxiety is natural
Anxiety is an emotion tied closely to excitement, which gives you energy. Runners usually think anxiety is something negative that needs to be eliminated, but Wesch wants athletes to know that the way you perceive anxiety can determine whether you use it to your advantage or jeopardize your performance. “Anxiety gets a bad rap,” Wesch said. “It is 100 per cent natural to feel anxious before an event because it is alertness to something about to happen, your body is getting itself ready to perform.”
You can use the adrenaline and excitement that arise from your fight-or-flight response, and by slowing your breathing, you become more relaxed, confident and ready to run. Anxiety is preparing your body for the race, so take advantage of the excitement and channel it into your performance.
Mind and body connection
You can’t completely erase anxiety, but you can learn how to use it. Train your mind just as you would your body. When you want to get faster, you run more. When anxious thoughts arise, Wesch recommends shifting your perspective and confronting the two reasons they arise: importance and uncertainty.
“Let’s make the importance of your race realistic. If you don’t hit your goal time, it’s not the end of the world, you’re going to be okay,” Wesch said. “Don’t undermine the race; it is still important, but make it more realistic.
You can’t control everything, so focus on the things you can control,” she added. “You’ve done the training, you’ve prepared and done all the work. You ran way more kilometres in training than you are going to in the race.”
Staying ready is central to managing your anxiety. There are many things you can’t control on race day; the best way to be ready for the anxiety ahead is to learn to focus your thoughts on what you can control. While training physically, you should also work on your mindset. “What can you do? What are you good at? What have you done?” Wesch said. “This is training your focus, so that you can direct your thoughts vs. allowing your brain to jump all over the place.”
Now, you can take advantage of the race-day adrenaline and focus on performing rather than on everything that could go wrong. Managing your anxiety requires practice, just like sports. Spend time understanding what your mind is racing about and why, and use that awareness to focus your thoughts on the task at hand, to help fuel your race-day PB.