What Your Pre-Race Nerves Are Telling You

Pre-race anxiety is common and can appear as hyperfixation on forecasts, repeated checking of the body for injury or illness, restless sleep, obsessive gear preparation, and worst-case scenario thinking. These experiences can feel unpredictable even for experienced athletes, and they may lead to additional anxiety about being anxious. Anxiety before major events is a normal response to uncertainty and performance pressure, especially when significant effort and emotional investment are involved. Instead of fighting the anxiety, it can help to ask what the nerves are trying to communicate. Anxiety can indicate that the event matters deeply, reflecting months of training, sacrifice, and time away from other responsibilities.

"The "taper crazies" are a well-known phenomenon among athletes in the days or weeks preceding an endurance event. You hyperfixate on the forecast, scrutinize the body's sensations that could indicate injury or illness, toss and turn at night, triple-check your gear, invent impossible worst-case scenarios, and obsess over details that you cannot actually control. Even experienced athletes can be surprised by how psychologically unpredictable the days before a race can feel."

"When you are in the throes of this unique form of anxiety, it can feel distressing and uncomfortable. Many athletes may interpret these experiences as problematic or a sign of weakness. They start to feel anxious about being anxious. However, anxiety preceding any major event (particularly one involving uncertainty and performance pressure) is a normal psychological response. The more you have invested in the process, the more you care about the outcome."

"Instead of wrestling with pre-race anxiety, a more helpful starting point is to ask: What are these nerves trying to tell me? Anxiety is often a sign that we care deeply about something. A race may represent months of training, sacrifice, and emotional investment. You may have had many pre-dawn alarms, endured miserable weather, and taken time away from your family or other responsibilities."

"You prioritized training above comfort because this matters to you. If you did not care about the outcome, you likely would not be feeling anxious. With this in mind, we can reframe pre-race anxiety from something harmful or problematic to something natural, understandable, and expected."

Read at Psychology Today