How to Prepare for a Race Psychologically?

When you move to the next level of sports training, especially when we talk about Trail running, a question may arise: How do you prepare for a race psychologically?
Currently, all runners who want to achieve optimal performance prepare themselves physically in the right way to be fully ready for their target race. Additionally, many of them have a coach guiding them towards this goal.

They also take special care of their nutrition both during and outside of competition to perform at their best and take care of their bodies. Remember that the three pillars to improve sports performance are: Training, nutrition, and rest (the time when you can use sports pressotherapy).

But not as many have proper mental preparation. In the end, being mentally prepared can make the difference between reaching our goal or giving up.

It is important, at any level, to have a strong psychological foundation that helps us see and be our best version. We must understand that our mind should help us in every training session and competition. But it can also be our worst enemy and lead us to failure. Now, let's get to the important part… How do you prepare for a race psychologically?

For this, there are different techniques we can use; each person will find a different one that works for them, but above all, we must start from a foundation:

Goals for psychological race preparation

We must set goals both in the medium and long term to know where we are heading. These goals should be challenging for us but clearly achievable (for example, we cannot aim to break the world record for Vertical Kilometer if it is our first race of this type).

Mental plan

We will need to set a plan to act on. And that is the most important thing: action. We must think about where we fail and what we need to do to fix it and avoid giving up.

Mental management

There are several key points in mental management that can help us achieve our goal, such as:

• Set a goal before each competition or training session that depends only on you. Be your best version.
• If you get very stressed before a competition, try to relax by listening to music, focusing on your breathing, or talking with your family about any other topic. Everyone is different, and we must find our own methods.
• Always maintain your concentration. Focus your attention on the downhill section you are currently on, on those hill repeats you dislike but feel great doing.
• It is important to live in the moment. Whether in training or competition, don’t disconnect. Enjoy it!
• Leave behind any negative thoughts that come to your mind. Don’t listen to the devil inside us all!
  Better listen to the little angel that tells you how much you love running, that you have been preparing for months, and that you are having a blast.

More and more athletes have a sports psychologist on their team to better face all kinds of situations that arise both in training and competitions. This way, they can face challenges in the best possible way and prevent mental attitude from becoming a burden on sports performance.

With better management of situations and feelings, you will be able to continue enjoying to the fullest what you love most: dedicating your time to mountain running.

Disconnect!

Once training sessions or competitions are over, it is always desirable to unplug from the tension they produce. How? For example, by recovering with a good session of pressotherapy, and while doing it, you can do something you enjoy. For example: reading, watching a TV series, watching a movie, or listening to music for pressotherapy. The possibilities are endless. Now you have some keys to mentally overcome the problem we posed: How do you prepare for a race psychologically?

If you are interested, here is an article to learn how pressotherapy works.

Virginia Pérez Mesonero is an ambassador for Sizen and the 2019 RFEA mountain running championship winner.