Not exactly my regular post day, but I have something on my mind: pre-race jitters. I have only a week left until Disney World Marathon and I am freaking out! Have I trained enough? I don’t feel like I did enough long runs since Philadelphia Marathon. But I also don’t feel like I had enough recovery time and my legs are still frequently feeling sluggish. So it’s a double-whammy of worries: feeling tired and not training enough. I know my time won’t be as good as in Philly – Disney has more hills. But I should be able to finish. So far, I have finished all my races, one of them with a really serious stress injury and after a month of not moving in hopes that it would heal. Yet, I am stressed about the race.
So far, I was stressed before every marathon (all 4 of them so far and the 5th one this weekend). I was so concerned about the Baltimore Marathon (my first) that the only people who knew were my sister, my parents, my friend who let me crash at her place and a friend I was using as the emergency contact. The race went well and I got to brag to everybody. I know that 4:36 isn’t the world’s best time, but I was happy. When I ran the Marine Corps, I was way more open about it, but still nervous. It’s to the date the only marathon I ran with company (and I won’t be repeating that mistake ever again). My time wasn’t awful, but one day, I will post about the experience. It wasn’t good. Vermont was the third one and a whole another story due to the injury. I was still nervous, since I had such a long rest time and didn’t get through my long runs. My finish time was slow, but the race was absolutely spectacular.
And then there was Philly. I was so nervous! I knew I did everything I was supposed to. I guess it made the stress worse in some ways: I started to have ambitions regarding my finish time. I did make it with a pace lower than 10 minute mile I was dreaming of. But the day before, when I was stressing out, my friend who came out with me decided it was time to reason with me. He reminded me that I have been training hard. I have done several 20 mile runs. I already finished 3 marathons. So why am I still stressing??? Well, if only reason was enough to make the jitters go away… He was 100% correct of course. But it’s an emotion and reason wasn’t helping.
I have read articles that jitters help you perform your best. I read articles about power of positive thinking. I don’t know after how many races you stop being nervous. Once I get there, I will definitely let you know. For now, I will do my best to just be jittery, not a nervous wreck 😉