Overwhelmed & Underprepared As Your Big Race Approaches

Once triathlon race season arrives, we talk to athletes every day who are just weeks or days out from their big goal race and their varied levels of excitement and anxiety are truly cool to hear about.  It might be over a decade since my first triathlon races but I can still remember all of those same feelings.  Here are some of the things I wish I'd been told or that I wish I'd truly understood and taken to heart when I was in that spot where I felt totally overwhelmed and unprepared.

1.  Strategies to deal with race week nerves

- Do normal things

- Do distracting things.  But be smart about this one. For me, it would be something like burying myself in a page-turner of a book or watching an action-adventure or gut-busting comedy movie.  

-  Follow your usual race-week routine. If you've done some short course racing but this is your first distance or ultra-distance race, just follow your usual routine.  Trust that it's worked for you before and it will work for you now.

2.  Avoid disaster

You've come to the final days of the race fit and ready to race.  All you need to do it get to the start line healthy and injury free.  Not as easy as it might sound!!  Accidents leading to injury, sickness (flu, colds, chest infection), food poisoning, other ailments can all crop up race week to derail your plans.  There mght be no way to be 100% certain or safe but here are some things that would have prevented me and some of my friends from an eventual DNF or DNS

-  Prepare your own food.  
You are less likely to get food poisoning if you are in control of your food preparation.  And if you are preparing all of your usual foods, you are less likely to throw your system for a loop.  In case you're wondering, yes, I have gotten food poisoning just days before an Ironman.  I managed but it wasn't my best performance and it was more painful than it needed to be.

-  Avoid the prerace swim if the swim venue is generally sketchy or if recent rains have caused conditions to deteriorate.  And yes, I have picked up a bug from a pre-race swim in conditions that turned out to be less than optimal.  My race plans were derailed when I started feeling nauseous just 12 hours before the race and spending the night vomiting.  While I started the race, there was no way I could finish it;  I just couldn't eat or drink anything.

-  Be careful!   I'm sure we all know someone or have heard of someone who had a bike spill or a sprained ankle or other such ailment that prevented them from starting their race.  This one hasn't happened to me.  Yet.  But you can never bee too careful.

3.  Stick to your plan and don't over-train this week.

Your taper allows you to recover from all your long and hard training time and it allows you to replenish all your reserves, both mental and physical.  You might be tempted to burn up some of that energy in a few good workouts.  Don't be afraid to do enough training to keep the joints and muscles moving but don't overdo it either.  


And try to remember to have some fun, find some joy in the whole experience and reconnect with your inner athlete.  It's all up to you and you got this!