Standing on the starting line is, and always has been, an incredibly vulnerable experience. It is in the heartbeats between “on your mark” and the blast of the starting gun that I am forced to take a long, hard look at myself — to scrutinize the months of training that have led me to this starting line and to be honest with myself about whether that training has been consistent enough. These moments are the ones when I have always been the most anxious, forcing myself to act confident and breathe more deeply, hands tapping incessantly at my sides all the while.
In past years, I have made futile attempts to push away the fluttering butterflies in my stomach by focusing on my goal time for each race. But the more I thought about the time on the clock, the more my hands shook and my thoughts spun out of control. On multiple occasions, I found myself shutting down because of my nerves, unable to stop thinking, “What if I don’t set a personal record?” and “What if I get a stomach cramp?” and all the other what-ifs.
Despite my love for running, my anxiety did not dissipate during these races. I was constantly worrying about whether I was on track to run a personal record and whether I was hitting the splits — the times I wanted to run each mile in — I had planned for earlier. I knew it was normal to get nervous before a competition, because even the best athletes did. But at the same time, my pre-race nerves were escalating into anxiety, which was affecting my performance and, more importantly, my love for running.
Halfway through my freshman year, I approached my coach about this problem, looking to change my mentality before races. Instead of immediately providing me with techniques to soothe my nerves on the starting line, he gave me a piece of advice that has since resonated with me every time I am racing: “You’re nervous because you care.”
That short phrase was all it took to reframe the way I viewed my nervousness: to not only validate the fact that I was getting nervous, but to help reframe my anxiety as a positive thing. Since then, I have continued to comfort myself on the starting line by repeating that phrase, which has helped me take my mind off the “what-ifs” that used to run rampant through my head and keep me focused on the present instead.
The phrase was a reminder that I loved running and that my passion did not have to disappear whenever I raced. Finding joy on race day — by doing my hair with my friends on the way to the meet, reminding myself to smile on the start line and, most importantly to me, finding one thing to be proud of after every race — have all helped me take the pressure off myself on the start line.
During the races itself, I found that not focusing on the times I wanted to run brought me far more happiness than thinking about my splits ever did. Since then, my pre-race goals have been far less rigid — instead of choosing a time-based goal, I set goals
that are more focused on how I execute a race and do not depend on the pace at which I am running. Instead of striving to run my final mile of a 3200-meter race in under 5:40 or the third lap of a 1600-meter race in 80 seconds, I now try to make a surge on the fifth lap or to look up and commit to chasing down the person ahead of me halfway through the race. Focusing on the execution rather than the times, in addition to being far more feasible goals, allows me to be so much happier after races and gives me something to be proud of even on a bad day.
Finding joy during races and reframing my nervousness as a positive thing has been a crucial part of lessening the anxiety I once felt before races. It has made me far more resilient after a bad day and has allowed me to learn more from my races than focusing incessantly on times ever has. But despite my new way of thinking, I have not completely overcome my pre-race nerves, nor do I ever think I will — and that’s OK. After all, I get nervous because I care.
