Hi Guys,
This weekend I’m gonna do my first race of the season. It’s a Oly distance…
During this week, I almost cannot handle the pressure in my head ( and I can tell you… I have a huge head… ) Maybe I already ask to myself 1000 times : Am I preapared ? Am I going to do a good race ? Am I going to break my PR ?..
Even with more the 15 triathlons in my back, I still feel under pressure…
How can you guys deal with that ? How is your week preparation for the races ?
Thanks…
You are ready. You did the training you could do, and you did it as best you could. The miles are in the bank and now its time to race. You are ready. Just do what you do. Remember that everybody in the race is a little nervous- many are a lot nervous. You’ll be fine. As soon as the gun goes off you’ll do fine.
Consider yourself fortunate that you can do a tri this weekend. Many of us are completely snowed in. In fact our season doesn’t begin until mid May.
Thanks Tom for the good words… I’ll try keep thinking about that…
Cerveloguy,
Here is complete the opposite… today our temperature is 35 degrees celsius and 85% humidity…
Could you imagine running at 11:00 am at this temperature ???
I’m praying to rain on sunday !!!
Luiz,
Just curious, where are you. Here in Ontario it’s about -20 C(-4 F) and I’m just in the process of gathering up my x-country skiis to go out for a spin over lunchtime.
Leng, Ali’s words make a great pre-race mantra:
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights”
.
Hi Cerveloguy,
I live in Brazil ( Sao Paulo )… This race is gonna be in Santos ( Triathlon Internacional de Santos )…
If you are a Triathletemag subscriber last year the cover page it was about this race ( with Oscar Galindez and Chris Mccormarck in the podium ).
Fizzy,
This frase is great !!! I will saved !!! Thanks…
This isn’t necessarily bad if you just don’t take it too far.
This stuff most likely goes through everyones head here on slowtwitch before a race at least once. It comes natural to think about those things.
Use this edginess to get you excited when you look back over your training you’ve been diong, realize that you did your best you could and it’s time to get movitated to do that PR.
It first really hit home before a marathon. I had trained for 5 months for this one race. My inlaws were commenting about how nervous I must be and asked how I could even race well with all that pressure. That is when I realized, the race is already over. There is nothing that can be done in the last week that will help you on race day. You’ve run the race over the last several months of training. Sunday morning is just the formal recognition of this fact.
Related to this concept, although (in local sprints) I’m getting close to the podium I’m truly racing myself. My motivation for doing all this is to better myself. The measure of my success is how close I have come to achieving my potential.
When you start to get too stressed, focus on what you can impact. You can’t worry about getting X place, you can’t control whether the national champion shows up that day. You can control how well you achieve your potential.