Nerves

A few more days until Kona, and I am guessing the nerves will be just about to kick in for most of the folks on the Island. I am not there with them obviously, but I always used to be fairly good for race nerves until a couple of days before. Usually there was enough to distract me 4 or 5 days out from the race, but once the race was only one or two days away it become very hard not to think about what was coming. With event registration to do, bikes to be racked etc, the race was really in your race. Once I started thinking about it I struggled to stop.

I am not sure I ever really established a strategy to deal with race nerves. If I am honest I probably sabotaged myself on more than one occasion by psyching myself out in the days prior to the race. The best strategies I think I found were by planning adequately and by keeping my mind occupied.

The planning side of things is pretty obvious. If I knew what I had to do and when I had to do it then it was one less thing to worry about. With adequate planning I was able to get things done with plenty of time to spare, such as bike racking and registration. Once again, getting tasks done with plenty of time meant there was less things to worry about and I wasn't causing myself unnecessary stress by leaving things to the last minute.

This sort of planning also extended to things like diet, bed time, wake up time etc. The usual recommendation for all these things is to keep them as close to normal as possible and that is certainly what I tried to do. I found that when I bought variables into these things is when I started to bring in doubts and, therefore, nerves. Am I getting enough sleep? Should I have eaten that etc? By sticking with normal routines I tried to minimise these doubts.

The same went for training in the week before the race too. Athletes are typically very nervous during taper. They are scared of getting sick, losing fitness, not training enough, training too much... The list is a long one. By having a training plan for the week before the race (including travelling days) and sticking to the plan it was another unknown that could be put to rest. For me less unknowns meant less stress and less nerves.

Proper planning didn't just mean planning of my days leading up to the race, but also the planning of my race itself. If I knew that I had a clear plan for the race and a clear idea of what I had coming, and that I was ready for it, then that helped me stay calm. The unknowns of race day tend to be the things that bring panic, when we are scared of what is coming and our ability to cope. I always found the biggest thing that calmed me down was the knowledge that I was prepared and ready for race day.

The final thing I used to find helped me keep my nerves under control was just plain keeping myself distracted. Of course this doesn't mean running around the expo and all the tourist sites etc all day in the sun, after all there is a fine line between keeping yourself busy and unnecessarily burning energy. Leading up to a race you are obviously meant to be resting up and so that was always the priority. However, I also found it useful to not just be sitting around obsessing about the race. Once I knew that everything was in place, the plans were made, everything was as organised as it could be, I usually found it useful to then try and disconnect from the race for a while and think of other things. I might read a good book, watch a movie, go have a coffee etc. It is always important to focus on the race when the focus is necessary, during planning, visualisation etc, however, I never found it useful to think of nothing but the race. The more I thought about it, the worse the nerves usually became. I usually found it useful to be able to turn those nerves off periodically.

Despite all that I was never successful in quietening my nerves completely before a race. But I think that is completely normal. In the end nervousness can bring with it energy and excitement if harnessed properly. The trick is not letting that nervousness get out of hand and becoming a hindrance instead of a help.