Sweat is Not Enough:
Mental Preparation for Better Running on Race Day

John P. Sullivan, Psy.D. and Bridget A. Murphy, Ph.D.

Hours upon hours are spent preparing for races. Miles are run. Intervals are timed, and for many, the cross-training hours are also logged. However, sweat is not enough to maximize your potential on race day. Planning is one of the often forgotten skills that allow each runner to toe the line with confidence on any given race day. Yet, planning or preparing a routine seems to be a lost art for race preparation. We're not talking about the physical warm-up and warm-down; sweat is not enough. Rather, we're referring to mental and emotional preparation for races.

The unconscious, or "I don't really need to think about it", approach to mental and emotional readiness does not permit anyone to truly put your best foot forward. Honing and honoring mental and emotional aspects of performance makes your target of peak performance a much larger one. Honoring the mental and emotional facets of performance is not a difficult task. With practice, anyone can master these skills and consequently perform better and more consistently. Often, it only becomes obvious how important mental and emotional training is when something goes wrong.

Ideally, we encourage athletes to establish three warm-up routines to prepare them for all possible scenarios: an ideal warm-up, a warm-up for which there is little time to prepare, and an extended warm-up for when competition has been delayed. It is important to be prepared for each of these contingencies because when athletes are surprised, they are a second behind or completely out of sync. A pre-race routine increases the likelihood of performing at peak levels. The following will walk you through ways to build a pre-race routine that fits your individual needs. For ease of illustration we will separate the physical, mental and emotional preparation. Yet, we encourage you to tie them together in your own pre-race routine.

Part of any pre-race routine involves a physical warm-up, with which most of you are familiar. It will be important to examine your training routine and establish how much time is optimal for stretching and putting your heart rate in its target zones. Take the time to think about what you do for a physical warm-up and how much time it takes to complete this phase of race preparation. Additional questions you might ask yourself include some of the following. How much stretching is enough for you? What meals and snacks are planned? Have you considered your fluid intake during pre-race preparations? How much sleep do you need in the days leading up to the competition?

Remember, sweat is not enough. You must also attend to mental preparation before toeing the line. While most of you would consider some portion of your races mental, often adequate time is not allocated to formal mental training. We contend that by asking some simple questions of yourself and putting some easily learned skills to practice, you will be far stronger on race day.

How do you talk to yourself on race day? Is your self-dialogue filled with anxious tones, negative prophesies and the agony of defeat? If it is, you can predict how you will perform - not as well as you could! To put it quite simply, how you think affects how you feel and how you perform. Thus, allocating some time in your pre-race warm-up to check-in and assess how you talk to yourself becomes imperative. If you sense a negative tone, look to change the language to more positive or realistic phrases, such as "I'm nervous, but that's my body's way of preparing to compete. It's natural" or "I'm relaxed and focused." Be creative with how you change these thoughts but do not let the negative thoughts cycle over and over in your consciousness. To do so is comparable to self-handicapping, a process by which negative thoughts or behaviors bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. We have found it helpful to have athletes prepare more positive alternative thoughts for some of their most common negative statements ahead of time.