Blog # 1 - The Nerves

There are plenty of running blogs out there - possibly more blogs than people who read them. But not all running blogs are the same. In this blog, I won't be writing much about workouts, personal achievements, or race recaps. Instead, I'll be offering my thoughts, feelings, and opinions. I hope you find it entertaining. Either way, I will enjoy writing it.

In this first blog, I want to talk about pre-race nervousness. I set fairly challenging goals for myself and consequently feel a tremendous amount of self-induced pressure. Accordingly, I always get nervous the week prior to a race. Even if it's just a small hometown race, I experience anxiety. On race morning, I'm so nervous I'm jittery - really jittery. As I write this, I'm finishing a marathon training program where once again, I've set a challenging goal for myself. Four full weeks prior to the race, I started getting nervous. Not just a little nervous but stomach turning nervous.

I've often wondered whether this is normal. Is it excessive for a recreational runner like myself to apply "unnecessary" pressure and get so nervous? After all, it's not like this is my life line. And nobody else really cares how I perform. So why do I do this to myself? Do other runners experience such pre-race anxiety?

Wanting to know, I recently polled three of my running buddies. While one runner said he never gets nervous at all, the other two said they only get a little nervous. Although the sample of runners was relatively small, not a single one experiences a high degree of pre-race anxiety. Does this prove my level of nervousness is abnormal? Or is it possible I just polled the wrong people? I still don't know for sure. And it makes me nervous.