PART 4. EXECUTING ON RACE DAY
Race Day Readiness
Racing is an incredible opportunity to showcase the impact of your training. You’ve put in all the hard work to prepare for the event. Now put the final touches on your preparation to ensure you arrive at the starting line ready to execute.
Optimizing Your Arousal Level
When it comes to race day readiness, it’s helpful to understand your optimal level of arousal as you arrive at the race, warm up, and line up at the start. Although arousal levels vary by sport, they are also very personal to each athlete within a sport. It may also differ for you based on event type and distance. For example, you might need a lower level of arousal before the start of a marathon than you do before the start of a 5K.
The optimal level of arousal for performance is based on the Yerkes–Dodson law, originally developed in 1908 by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson. This law states that performance increases as physiological and psychological arousal increases — but only up to a point, because too much arousal diminishes performance. The relationship between arousal and performance therefore looks like a bell curve with optimal arousal somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. For example, on a scale from 1 (no arousal) to 10 (maximum arousal), optimal arousal will be somewhere between 4 and 6.
As a high school cross country runner, I remember driving to some of our meets with friends who blasted music in the car that got all of us pumped up as we moved to the upbeat tunes. I would often arrive at the starting line of those races feeling drained compared to when I drove myself. I eventually recognized that I needed a calmer pre-race routine to arrive at the starting line in my optimal state.
To determine your optimal arousal state, think about your prior race experiences and the level of arousal going into those races that worked best for you. Rate that on an arousal scale from 1 to 10. Then develop a pre-race routine that positions you in your optimal arousal state.
Dealing with Pre-Race Jitters
It’s common for athletes to experience anxiety before a race or key training session — “pre-race jitters.” Dealing with the jitters starts by recognizing anxiety as a sign that you care about your performance and understanding how anxiety develops in the mind.
Anxiety is related to fear, but differs in key ways. Fear occurs when we experience a real-life threat to our well-being or existence. For example, you’re running down the trail and find yourself face-to-face with a bear. That’s a very real threat. Anxiety, on the other hand, occurs when we develop a mental image of something that may go wrong — the anticipation of a future threat. For example, you’re getting ready for a trail run and start to think, “What if I encounter a bear? I know bears are active where I’ll be running.” The anticipation of a future threat stimulates the same “fight-flight-or-freeze” nervous system response as an actual threat, causing the pre-race jitters.
Anxiety — whether in sport or life — develops in situations that involve unpredictability, where we lack control, or when something we care about feels threatened. We can’t predict how the race will unfold or what other competitors will do, and this may be a source of anxiety. We have no control over the weather and a forecast of rain, which may be a source of anxiety if we don’t like competing in the rain. We may feel anxious about anticipated pain or discomfort associated with the race. We may feel like we don’t have the necessary skills to match the activity. We may feel like our identity is on the line and threatened. The deeper the threat to our identity, the greater the anxiety. This is why jitters often arise before those big events we’ve been training for all year. We might perceive the inability to perform up to our expectations as a threat to our identity as an athlete or as a person.
Simply ignoring anxiety or trying to push it away doesn’t work. Since we can’t change what we’re not fully aware of, dealing with anxiety requires applying that foundational mental skill of mindfulness to recognize what is triggering it. We can then tame it by understanding its sources, reframing the perceived threats as challenges, and countering the anxiety triggers with trust. Anxiety, in many ways, revolves around a temporary lack of trust we have in our abilities to perform. The practical application that follows walks you through each of these steps to help you prepare for an upcoming race.
Regulating Emotions
Emotional regulation is another vital mental skill for athletes to have in their repertoire on race day to deal with the jitters, but it can also be put to use on training days and in everyday life.
Emotional regulation refers to the ability to regulate your mind, body, and spirit given the demands of the situation. There’s no single method for emotional regulation and how you go about it depends on what works best for you. But, as with all advanced mental skills, emotional regulation builds on the foundational skill of awareness. We must first recognize what’s happening with our emotions before we can regulate them.
We also need to understand the levers we have for regulating emotions. There are three key aspects of our lived experiences: (1) actions/behaviors, (2) thoughts/thinking, and (3) emotions/moods. Only the first two are directly modifiable in any given moment. We can change what we’re doing and we can change what we’re thinking. Emotions/moods are trickier to control. Since we don’t have a direct lever to shift emotions, we need to use the levers for actions and thoughts to indirectly regulate emotions.
Regulating our physical experiences can modify our psychological states. Let’s say you leave a chaotic work meeting that leaves you feeling frustrated and angry. From your mindfulness training, you recognize the emotions you’re feeling and want to modify them before you take an important call with a client. So you focus on shifting your physical state by sitting quietly for a minute to bring your breathing and heart rate down to a resting state. By the end of that minute, your physical state has shifted with the nervous system moving from a “flight or flight” state to a relaxed state. You complement this by redirecting your thoughts, perhaps reframing your frustration and anger as signs of involvement and opportunities to pursue. This paves the way for your emotions to follow.
The same process works in athletic situations where you need to maintain composure and control over your emotions, whether you’re experiencing anxiety at the start of a race or anger at a competitor who cut you off at a turn. What you can control are your actions, such as taking some deep breaths to slow your breathing rate, and your thoughts about the situation, allowing your emotions to shift accordingly.
Responding to the Unexpected
Races — and life — never unfold perfectly. Even the best laid plans are subject to disruption as unexpected situations inevitably arise.
I like to think of racing as something done from within the eye of a hurricane. Within the eye, everything is calm and still, even as the chaos of the hurricane swirls around it. This metaphor underscores how a calm mind can be the driving center of intense physical performance surrounded by unexpected variables out of your control. Residing within the hurricane’s eye allows you to maintain composure as you direct all of your resources to perform at your best.
When dealing with unplanned or unexpected situations, strive to respond rather than simply react. Responding entails starting from a place of awareness and presence. You take in the situation and recognize what’s happening without judgment, purposefully attending to the relevant details so you can respond effectively. Reacting, on the other hand, carries the connotation of being driven by a stimulus without necessarily acting from a place of awareness and presence.
Responding is clearly a better strategy to dealing with any crisis situation because it leaves you in charge, not the stimulus. Responding can be done quickly, but must always be done with awareness and presence. Draw from your foundational mindfulness practice as you work to bring this type of awareness and presence into your training and racing — and life.
✍Practical Application: Prepare for Race Day
Work through the exercises below as you get closer to a key race. Writing these down on paper or in the workbook facilitates the thinking process, allowing you to work through any barriers that you’re running up against as the race approaches.
Your Optimal Arousal Level

On a scale from 1 (no arousal) to 10 (maximum arousal), optimal arousal is usually somewhere between 4 and 6.
- Note your optimal arousal level going into a race.
- Jot down some ways you can regulate that level.
Understand the Threat Appraisal
Going into a race, write down responses to each of the three building blocks of anxiety. This brings awareness to what you’re experiencing so you can more effectively deal with it.
- What’s unpredictable?
- What can’t you control?
- What (that you care about) feels like it’s being threatened?
Turn the Threat into a Challenge Appraisal
Challenge drives excitement and enthusiasm. To turn the threat appraisal into a challenge appraisal, consider what’s exciting about the challenge, what opportunities it provides, and how you might be curious about the experience. Write down your thoughts to each of these questions as you work to reframe the experience from a threat to a challenge and opportunity.
- What’s exciting to you about the challenge?
- What opportunities does the challenge provide?
- In what ways could you explore the experience with curiosity?
Counter Anxiety Triggers with Trust
Anxiety, in many ways, revolves around a temporary lack of trust we have in our abilities to perform. To remind yourself of those abilities, take a moment to reflect on your training leading up to the race, your past experiences as an athlete, and your past life experiences. Keep these confidence statements in mind as you head to the starting line of the race.
- Trust Your Training. Look back at your training leading up to the race and write down key milestones you achieved and positive takeaways you had from particular training sessions. (Facilitate this during training by jotting down positive takeaways in your training log for key workouts.)
- Trust Yourself as an Athlete. Look back at your athletic career and write down key milestones you achieved, including the confidence statements from your goal sheet for this race.
- Trust Yourself as a Person. Look back at your life experiences and write down key moments where you weathered adversity or overcame difficult challenges.
Workbook
The workbook provides templates for all of the practical applications in the guide. Download here if you haven’t already:
- Practical Application Workbook (Google Doc)
Post-Race Debriefing
Assessing Your Race
Debriefing after the race is a great way to close the loop on your goal-achievement journey. It allows you to record lessons learned so you can set yourself up for future success.
The best time to debrief after a race is not immediately after crossing the finish line. Give yourself time to relax, eat, and sleep before sitting down for a self-assessment. The next day or two is ideal, if possible. Otherwise, try to do it within a week or two at the most. You want to capture your thoughts while the experience is still fresh in your mind.
Approach your post-race debriefing with a growth mindset to pull out key learnings. Here are some questions to guide your self-assessment — or, if you’re working with a coach, to guide your discussion with your coach.
- What went well in the race? Consider things like pacing, nutrition, tactics, etc. You can note things both in your control and out of your control.
- What didn’t go well in the race? Consider things like pacing, nutrition, tactics, etc. You can note things both in your control and out of your control.
- If you had a race plan or strategy, were you able to follow it? Is there anything you would have changed about that plan or strategy?
- Did you stay on top of your fueling and hydration? If not, what barriers did you encounter? What lessons did you learn about food preferences while racing?
- How well did you show up and meet the performance standards you set for yourself? Consider where you met the standards. Consider where you may have struggled and what the barriers were to meeting them.
- In what areas did you feel particularly prepared and/or underprepared? Consider any issues that are relevant — physical, mental, nutritional, etc.
- What about your training would you do differently next time? If you could go back and adjust your training plan with 20/20 hindsight, how would you adjust it?
- What about your training would you keep the same next time? What are some things that worked well?
- What did you learn about yourself as an athlete and as a person from the experience? In what ways are you a different person now that you’ve gone through that experience?
- Any additional thoughts or reflections on the experience? Reflect on and discuss anything else that’s on your mind after the race.
Writing down your thoughts is not only a great way to facilitate self-assessment, but you can also look back on the lessons you recorded to guide your future success.
Dealing with Not Meeting Your Big Goal
“Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
— Bruce Lee
Many things on race day are out of our control, including many factors related to whether we achieve the goal we set. As discussed in the goal setting section of the guide, we have less control over outcome goals than we do over our performance goals and process goals. Maybe course or weather conditions mitigate against achieving the main goal. Maybe we experience illness or injury that keeps us from reaching the desired outcome.
Over the course of your athletic career, there will be times when you do not achieve the outcome you set for yourself and it’s important to be prepared to deal with that. One way to do that is by focusing on your performance standards. Remember, these standards represent how you want to perform even when everything around you seems to be unraveling. Keep those performance standards front of mind and pursue those even when the main goal moves out of reach.
Disappointment often comes with not reaching a big goal goal. Disappointment is fine, but don’t let disappointment turn to devastation by undermining your identity as an athlete or person. Not achieving a goal is not the end of who you are. Keep things in perspective and remember that who you are as an athlete and person runs deeper than any single race.
Adopt a growth mindset to stay focused on learning and growth. The path to success never follows a straight line and we often learn the most from setbacks. After the sting of disappointment subsides, dive into the learnings you gained from the experience. Apply those lessons to continue to develop as an athlete and person. They’re valuable and you paid for them in sweat and tears, so don’t let them go to waste.
✍Practical Application: Assess Your Race
In a notebook or the workbook, use the prompts below to reflect on your race experience.
- What went well in the race? Consider things like pacing, nutrition, tactics, etc. You can note things both in your control and out of your control.
- What didn’t go well in the race? Consider things like pacing, nutrition, tactics, etc. You can note things both in your control and out of your control.
- If you had a race plan or strategy, were you able to follow it? Is there anything you would have changed about that plan or strategy?
- Did you stay on top of your fueling and hydration? If not, what barriers did you encounter? What lessons did you learn about food preferences while racing?
- How well did you show up and meet the performance standards you set for yourself? Consider where you met the standards. Consider where you may have struggled and what the barriers were to meeting them.
- In what areas did you feel particularly prepared and/or underprepared? Consider any issues that are relevant — physical, mental, nutritional, etc.
- What about your training would you do differently next time? If you could go back and adjust your training plan with 20/20 hindsight, how would you adjust it?
- What about your training would you keep the same next time? What are some things that worked well?
- What did you learn about yourself as an athlete and as a person from the experience? In what ways are you a different person now that you’ve gone through that experience?
- Any additional thoughts or reflections on the experience? Reflect on and discuss anything else that’s on your mind after the race.
Workbook
The workbook provides templates for all of the practical applications in the guide. Download here if you haven’t already:
- Practical Application Workbook (Google Doc)
Mental Skills Development as an Ongoing Process
“It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I’ve done a lot of really stupid things, and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, and all the dopey things, and all the times I was embarrassed — they don’t matter. What matters is that I can kind of look back and say: Pretty much any time I got the chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it — and that’s where my solace comes from.”
— Randy Pausch
By now you should have a better understanding of what motivates you — including your big By now you should have a better understanding of what motivates you — including your big “why,” or purpose. You have a specific set of performance standards that you can work on implementing in everyday training and racing. You know how to set SMART goals and work backwards to develop your intermediary goals.
You have a better understanding of the limits of performance and the power of mental skills to improve performance. You are developing your mindfulness and attentional control. You have strategies to develop your mental toughness, leverage your self-talk, and use mental imagery.
You know how to prepare for your race to optimize arousal and allay pre-race anxiety. And you know how to close the loop of the goal-achievement journey with a post-race debriefing.
Although it’s the end of this guide, it’s only just the beginning of your mental skills training.
Developing mental skills is an ongoing process that is never complete or final. It’s not like the skill of tying a shoe where there’s a clear delineation between having the skill or not. Mental skills are always a work in progress. We never simply “have them” or not, but are always working to develop them, to improve them, and to implement them more effectively.
Even with consistent mental skills training, there will be times when you struggle and fail. Imperfection is part of what it means to be human and mental skills training will not make you immune to failure, but it will allow you to harness failure to more effectively set yourself up for success.
You may not always reach your big goals, but mental skills training will make you a better athlete in the process of going after them — and, if done with the right intention, a better person.
✍ Practical Application: Mental Skills Training for Your Workouts
Integrate mental skills training directly into your physical workouts. Check out the “Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training Plan” on TrainingPeaks, which provides prompts and activities directly in your training calendar to help you implement the ideas and skills found in the “Guide to Goal Setting & Mental Skills Training.”