How to Deal with Pre-Race Anxiety & Stress | My tips for managing nerves before running a marathon

Hello everybody and welcome back to the channel. My name's Ben Parks, 225 Marathon, and what I wanted to chat about with you today is pre-race anxiety. It affects all of us, no one is immune from this, but I've got lots of tips and tricks today with what we can do to help reduce it to help your race day go that little bit better. So sit back, relax, let's get stuck into this, let's get this done. It's great to have you back for another video, guys. Yeah, pre-race anxiety, really, really difficult subject, but everybody suffers from this, me especially, but I've got loads of tips and tricks coming up today that I have been putting in place over the years to help my race day go as smoothly as possible. So without further ado, let's get stuck in to my top tips to help beat that race day anxiety. So the first thing we're gonna have a chat about here is to get yourself into a pre-run routine, something you do the same with every single run that you go on. Now you probably see this a lot in my videos. I get up, I have my breakfast, I let that digest, then it's outside to go into my warm-up routine, my drills, and I do this for every single run I go on, and you might often hear me say in the video, with a beep of the Garmin, with the beep of the Garmin, we're off, because as the Garmin beeps at the start of every run, it's exactly the same, and with our race, it's just another run. And when you're standing there on race day, getting all nervous, just to go into this routine that you do for every single run will really help get the brain in the right place to think, it's just another run, we're just doing our normal routine, and you can get out and blast it on race day. Moving on, now this might sound a little bit odd, but I'd say it's so important to do lots of warm-up races, and they don't always have to be races, they could be things like park run, run-through events, and things like that. Now why I think this is so important is because then you can practice going through all of your routine, turning up at exactly the right time for the race to start. These races, they don't quite mean as much with our sort of outcome performance-focused goals, it just helps really normalise that race day experience. Something I try and practise on as much as I can, getting as many races as I can, then come race day, it's just another race, it just feels like any other one. The next one, I think it's really important to give yourself A, B, and C goals, or some people call this gold, silver, and bronze goals. Now your A goal might be your extreme, absolute dream, if everything goes perfectly. Your B might be, well, I'm really happy with that, and I'd always say make your C goal, I got round, and I finished, and I had fun. And I really think it's a really important thing here, just to help keep your expectations in management. We really can't always hit those A goals as much as we want to, but hitting the B and C goals will still leave you, at the end of the day, feeling satisfied, happy, and ready to move on to your next race. Today's question of the day is, what is your biggest race fear, and most importantly, how do you overcome it? Help out the community down below in the comments, and let us know. Right, back to the video. Let's have a chat about dress rehearsals. Super important for any sort of racing, but especially marathon racing. So what I mean by this, well, the marathon's a very long run, we're doing lots of long runs in our training, so we have maybe 12, 13, 14 opportunities here to practice our kit and perfect it for race day. So practicing in our race day shoes, our race day socks, shorts, singlets, tops, hats, available on benparks.com, although these, of course, always work because they're the best hats in the business. Now, it's really important to sort of fine-tune everything, test a few things out, and don't leave any chances on race day. So when we're there, on the start line, everything, we've run in it, we used it, we know it's going to work perfectly well. The golden rule, obviously, don't try anything new on race day. Practice with it, and make sure it's worked in your training. So a lot of people start panicking with two weeks to go as they enter the taper, because they think, I haven't done enough training, and now is the best time to try and cram a load of stuff in. It's never going to happen. In those last two weeks, we really cannot add any fitness. So don't panic. If you have missed runs and you've missed a few sessions, we have this rough rule of around about 80% of your training, if you've hit 80% of your training, you're going to be all right on race day. No one goes through a whole training cycle without things cropping up, events, missed runs and things like that. So don't worry, if you've hit about 80%, you're more than likely going to be absolutely fine on race day. Now is not the time to cram anything in. You're going to be just fine. Don't worry. Right guys, moving on. I've made a little list of all the sort of regular things that come up by people asking us about things they're worried about with their race. So the first one, they're worried about blowing up, basically hitting the wall towards the end of the race. Normally this is because people go off too fast. So we're going to practice our pacing, practice running during our long runs at our goal pace and then using our Garmin, Corus, whatever on the day to stick at our pace. Going off too fast, you're going to blow up. Moving on, people worry about toilet stops. Well, at the start of the races, there's always going to be loads of portaloos or port-a-potties and going round the course. Pretty much every marathon race I've ever done, there's been plenty of loos on the course. But worried about getting about dehydrated. Well, you can get dehydrated if it's hot. During your sort of warm-up and everything, I always like to have a sip on my Morton and water, a little bit of orange juice in there as well. And then going round just a little, little and often as you go round. In every race I've ever been in, there's been plenty of water stops out there. You'll be absolutely fine. People that get worried about not hitting their goal. Well, as we said earlier, having an A, B and C goal, you're going to hit something and always with those goals, whatever happens, you're going to come out with something. Even if things go wrong, you're going to learn from that and you can take it forward to your next race as well. So there's always going to be some positives. Moving on, people that are really worried about social media. Yeah, it is a really difficult one. Tell me about it. You put yourself out there, you are open for criticism and all of this type of stuff. The vast, vast, vast majority of people really are not that bothered how you do. They just want you to get round safe and well and enjoy it and hit your goals. And so try not to put yourself under that extra pressure trying to impress everybody else. And it's so hard to do, but try not to compare yourself to others in all the race results and stuff like that. And then finally, people that get worried about being in pain during the end of the race and hitting the wall and things like that. Again, this is where the training comes in. We train and we do those long runs and we do those fast finish long runs and we do marathon pace at the back of our long runs. We run on tired legs. So when it comes to race day, the pain isn't anywhere near as bad as you think it's going to be. The race day atmosphere is incredible. Running on race day is a lot easier than running in training. The atmosphere out there, the crowds, the other supporters, you've got people handing you water, people handing you energy. Running on race day is a hell of a lot easier than in your training runs. Quickly guys, if you are finding this video useful, please hit that like button, share the video with your friend and answer today's question of the day down below. It's what are you most nervous about with racing and how do you overcome it? Just want to have a quick chat about sleeping and mindful meditation and breathing, things like that. All things that will really help reduce our anxiety. Now sleeping is a little bit easier said than done. When we're anxious and stressed, it's really hard to get a good night's sleep. But things like reducing our screens, reducing the amount of blue light and having like a daily nighttime meditation before we go to bed. There's lots of apps and YouTube videos out there. I personally use the Calm app and it really helps get me into that nice, relaxed state before bed. Also something that can be quite good is our garments have some breathing techniques built into them. Not every single garment does, but it's worth having a look. And if you're there on race day and you're getting sort of panicked and nervous just before the start of the race, it can be quite good just to help with your breathing. If you've got your phone with you, there might be some guides there on YouTube you can follow along just to help reduce our breathing, get it nice and regulated and that will help calm ourselves down before the race. And the final one for today is positive visualization. To visualize yourself crossing the finish line, hands in the air, that time on the clock, your dream goal there. Now this might sound a little bit cheesy, but getting that into your head, thinking about it all the time. Yes, some people may say that's gonna make you more anxious, but in my eyes, this is gonna really help you believe you can do it. So much of running is in the mental side of it, believing you can do it. You can do it, you can achieve way more than you think you can, but that all starts with you positively visualizing what you can do. Believe me, it works. I've used this for all of the races that I've had is to get in the right mindset before the race. Right guys, there we go. Hopefully another helpful video for you there to help out with your running. And yeah, let us know how your next race goes. We'd love to hear how it's all going. And yeah, please check out the website, the latest training plans, the very best running hats and gear in the business available on benparks.com. Thank you so much for the channel members, the supporters on Patreon as well. We couldn't make this videos without your support. It's so, so appreciated. Right, I'm off to get my training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon back into action and hopefully we'll be seeing you a lot of guys out on the roads, the trails, up the mountains very, very soon. So that's it guys. Lots of love, all the best with your running and we'll see you in the next one.