Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of The Run to the Top Extra Kick daily podcast. I am your host one of the coaches here

at Runners Connect, Hayleyman and I am looking forward to talking to you today. Today I want to respond to requests I've heard from one of my

athletes that I coach and she asked about dealing with pre-race nerves. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

So I'm sure that as runners all of us have experienced those pre-race feelings of anxiety,

butterflies in our stomachs, feeling the need to visit. have experienced those pre-race feelings of anxiety.

Butterfly's in our stomachs, feeling the need to visit the loam more often,

a racing heart and feelings of fear and even dread.

Those are the classic signs of pre-race nerves.

And even though our races are virtual right now,

it won't be that way forever.

So it's worth thinking of ways to deal with these nerves.

And you know what? I know that many of our

athletes still get nervous for a virtual time trial. Some of us even get nervous about

hard workouts that we think are going to be particularly challenging or scary looking long runs and I'm actually one of those people so when I learned about the thing that I'm going to talk to you about today, she found it really helped with all those things, training and racing.

So first thing nerves are just fine. They show that you care. You really don't need to beat yourself up over feeling nervous because that's just going to add to the problem.

We put a lot of effort into our running so feeling nervous about things is absolutely natural normal.

And when it comes to anxiety, just like both not training enough

and training too much conceptuality performance, the same is true for anxiety. But it's not only that, it's how you react and respond to your anxiety.

There are ways that you can think about and deal with your anxiety to make it work with you and not against you.

And I'm not sure if you get what I'm leaning towards here, and that is maybe you don't need to get rid of your anxiety. Maybe you can use it against you. Maybe you can stop fighting it and tell yourself

that it's okay to have it. Because actually it can be a performance booster as well.

are those that find ways to use their nervous energy

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