Expect the Unexpected
What is it about racing that I enjoy?
Are you questioning your sanity as you eat/force another bowl of pasta into your day’s nutrition, reduce your weekly mileage whilst trying to avoid the eyerolling glare of your partner as you burst into tears yet again for “no apparent reason!”.
Why do we enter races?
Does this sound daft? But for me I love the mystery of never quite knowing what’s going to happen on race day. I can go into a race with the best intentions of what pace I’m going to run, with the best training plan behind me and with the most positive mindset. Yet the race can unravel in front of me like a fallen spool of thread impelling an unexpected plot twist to my best intentions, forcibly steering me to, at times, a radical change in the direction I thought I was heading.
Sometimes the race’s plot twist is serendipitous, with delightful, unanticipated results, a new pb, or my best performance yet, but other times the curveball of the unexpected can completely knock me off my feet; but with time, and many curveballs, failures, and success’s, I’ve found ways to build resilience that can turn challenging situations into positive ones.
And it’s this bigger picture, that I love about the cycle of a race, the preparation, the commitment and focus, the lead up to the big day, the day itself and then, whatever happens, I know that I can pick myself up, dust myself down, reflect, adjust, and run another day.
Leading up to any race day, I now know that I can only control as much as I can, and I’ve learnt to be ok with that. There are 365 days in a year, but no 2 days are ever the same, we’re not robots, eating, sleeping, living every day the same way as the day before. If we accept that on that one day of the race, we just don’t know whether our body and mind are going to say, “Yes this is our day!” or that the sun will beat down on us, that you’ll snap your shoelace on the morning of the race, hurdle over discarded water bottles, trip over a fellow runner…..we know the list of extraneous variables is long.
But before you throw all the preparatory work out of the window, there are factors that can be controlled and numerous strategies to adopt so when faced with a challenge, adaptation, and positivity will ensure you’re not completely derailed by any situation. In my experience, it’s never the fittest person that gets to the finish line first, it’s the person that runs the race the smartest.
Ask yourself are you a confidently competent runner?
Being a confidently competent running is about developing a sense of self-assurance and belief in your ability to run; knowing when to hold your pace or when to push. Trusting your training and combining this with a skill set of experiences empowers you to be able to run as effectively and efficiently as possible.
However, getting the balance right between being confident and competent can take time, I know I’ve had my fair share of being too much of each, mainly in the first few years of cutting my teeth in the world of running races.
Oodles of confidence but not very competent! Paris Marathon 2014
I was in no doubt that my training had gone well, I hadn’t missed a training run, I was fit, strong and hitting my metrics, I was so self-assured I thought a few wines on the Friday night before the race on Sunday wouldn’t make a shred of difference to my performance. Add another layer of naivety to top of this, I knew zilch about how to fuel the race, there wasn’t any social media or coaching advice to guide me so as I stood on the start line, oozing with confidence but unwittingly dehydrated, clutching my bottle of diluted Lucozade for fuel, I ran with gusto hitting my pace right up until the 40km mark when my body said NO MORE!! I paid for this lack of competence in the ability to fuel big time and I can still remember how much those last 2km hurt.
More competence than confidence! MK Half Marathon 2016
I became more skilled at developing a nutritional plan but come crunch time, I just lost confidence in trusting the training process setting off too fast, questioning the belief that I could achieve my goal time with a more cautious start, again paying the price after just 5km of a half marathon….10 miles of suffering is……, well 10 miles of suffering.
How do you find the balance?
Do you race with your head starting off with more caution, using your head’s analytical knowledge that holding back will enable you to finish strong; but as you pore over the splits you “feel” you could have gone quicker…..
Or do you run with your heart, letting go, just racing, seeing what you’ve got, hanging in there with sheer grit as you push yourself to your limit?
Learning how to be a confidently competent runner is about finding the balance between the analytical side of your brain and the emotional side; part of developing this skill set is accepting the uncomfortable feeling of not always being able to control all the variables and to expect the unexpected on race day.
What can you control?
Mental plan – create an actual plan for the thoughts you want to have throughout the race. How you construct this is up to you, it could be that you’ll think about X at the 5km, 10km 15km mark or that you’ll think about Y at the 3-mile, 6-mile mark, whatever works for you but make sure you do it with intention and in a way that you’ll remember it.
Plan for the second half of the race, this is when your mind can wander, and you lose your focus. If it gets tough, as tempting as it is to have a pity party, you need to get your brain back into the game and having an already written script can quickly pull yourself back to positivity.
Ask yourself “How do I want to think?”
Write down your best runs and re-live them in the lead up to your race, remind yourself about how awesome you are and reflect on the person you have become whilst training for this race.
Finally, familiarise yourself with your race route, do your research and watch videos of other runners running the route of the marathon, prepare yourself for the crowds of people at the start, notice where the support thins out and where the route takes you. Plan which mile/km markers you’ll take your gels, visualise yourself running tough sections, where are the inclines and mentally rehearse how you will feel running over the finish line.
