MINDSET
Racing 5km cross country is a difficult physical AND mental endurance challenge. It’s short enough that it requires super fast running. Yet it’s long enough that it takes every bit of focus to maintain pace for the duration. For this reason, most experienced coaches and athletes say that racing the 5km (well) is as much a mental feat as it is physical.
Mental toughness is a term that gets thrown around as being the most important factor in 5km racing. While being mentally tough is crucial, having a helpful racing mindset is much more than enduring suffering.
NOT ALLOWING MENTAL SPACE FOR EXCUSES
If you’re wondering if your training will come together, you’ve already created an out for it not to. If you’re wondering if you got enough sleep or if you ate a good enough breakfast, or if you ate to close to your race, or if your calf will hurt, you’re leaving room for reasons you may not succeed—your brain will find and latch on to these thoughts as you race!
We don’t say this to say that you would actually CHOOSE an out. It’s just that to race successfully, it takes 100% of your mental focus and effort in every moment—and when it gets hard (200m in!) and stays hard (for the next 4800m!) your mind will be looking for ways out—it would love to find any reason for you to ease up on your effort—it’s a mechanism to avoid discomfort.
So if you’ve chosen to step on the start line, belief in yourself and your fitness must be unwavering—you must fully commit to making the race into the race you want it to be.
KEEP RACING!
Rarely do athletes have a perfect day. Olympians have races delayed and need to extend their warm up for hours. They miss fuel stations in marathons. They fall. But it’s the response and the choice to keep racing and to stay engaged that makes successes. Waiting for the perfect day will end in disappointment because it will not come. You need to make the day good enough—you need to adapt your warm up, adapt the fueling, stand back up and get back in there and keep racing.
In not waiting for the perfect day—not waiting to feel good (you won’t!)—you can have a fantastic performance on any day. Catch yourself before deciding it's not your day. Things go wrong in every race—how you respond makes the difference!
VISUALIZATION
Visualization can be an important part of setting your mind right before a race or important workout.
Visualize arriving to the meet, the preparation and warm up. What are your thoughts and feelings? How do you respond to them? Visualize the start, visualize each part of the race. If you have some experience, you know some of the thoughts and feelings that may not have been helpful for you in the past—can you visualize changing unhelpful thoughts into helpful thoughts?
Visualize yourself accepting the discomfort of racing while continuing to stay mentally engaged with the competition around you—legs and arms, heart and lungs continuing to power through.
Visualize yourself returning to the present moment when you find yourself worrying about how much distance is left, focusing on the discomfort, already thinking about your finish time, or spacing out—return to the moment, return to the moment, return to the moment. What is happening right now in the race and what can you be doing right now in the race? Visualize yourself taking action.
The brain creates patterns like ruts in a muddy road. If you can live through your race in your mind and practice having the responses you want, on race day it’s easier for the mind to follow the grooves you’ve created.
RACING STRATEGIES
Having a race strategy can be helpful as you approach the start line of a 5km. However as you gain more experience racing, you’ll learn that a plan is just a plan, and being able to adapt and respond to the race as it’s happening in real time is where much of the fun and most of the successes are found.
—PACK RUNNING—Geese fly in formation, knowing they’re safer and more efficient in flight (and they honk to encourage the leader). In cross country, pack running is always going to be the more energy efficient way to race and to carry yourself and your teammates. If you have teammates of similar abilities, race together for as long as possible—really glom up and stick together! Surge together, encourage each other to move forward together, and pull each other along.
—FAST STARTS—Fast starts allow for good positioning. Are you a fast starter who likes to gain a good position? Do you enjoy running out in front and being chased? Running a 5km with even pacing is technically the best way to race, but races often go out fast and getting in the mix early on can be a good strategy if you have the fitness and it’s not too costly to the latter part of your race.
—PROGRESSIVE RUNNING—Taking a slightly less assertive start may be more suitable for a runner who likes to run from behind and pick people off. This may be a good strategy for experienced racers who are patient, are confident that they can pick up the pace in the middle of the race and are strong finishers. However be sure this strategy isn’t a response to fear of getting too uncomfortable too early in the race.
—TANGENTS AND SURGES—Be mindful of running tangents when possible. Are you running the shortest part of the course? Surge to do so if necessary. Also are you thinking about making moves when cresting hills and testing opponents when coming out of a turn? If you’ve got leg speed, use it! If you’re feeling like you’re settling, surge to catch the runner or pack in front of you. Surging can be the biggest mental boost to keep you engaged in the race.
NERVES
Training and racing should be fun. However nerves are a normal part of life and will present in times of higher stress or around activities that we care deeply about. It takes maturity and practice to recognize what nerves feel like, and to learn how to function well with them.
Many find it helpful to shift attention inward or outward when feeling nervous.
To tune inward, notice the feeling of your feet on the ground, the rise and fall of your chest while breathing, the sensation of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, the wind on your face. Tune into how your body feels in your surroundings.
To turn your attention outward, find three things that are blue, or green, or red. What sounds do you hear? Laughter, voices, traffic, birds?
You can practice these attention exercises at rest or while training and racing!