Competitive mindset

Each race provides an opportunity to learn and grow, regardless if the race goes as well as you had visualized. In my last couple of races, I learned some valuable lessons about pre-race preparation and the mental game leading up to and during the race. I hope you’ll find something you can learn about finding optimal pre-race preparation from these experiences.

In August, I competed in two trail races – the Rendezvous Mountain Hillclimb in Jackson, Wyoming and the USA Mountain Running Championships at the Gnar Gnar Race in Portland Oregon. The Rendezvous Mountain Hillclimb was an ideal tune-up for the US Mountain Running Championships that followed 8 days later. The course starts at the base on a gondola, runs up from an elevation of 6500ft to almost 10,000ft before descending back down in a screaming fast 2 miles…with a final short incline to the top of the gondola.

Since it was a 7 hour drive from Fort Collins to Jackson, we did a family road trip on Friday before the Saturday race. The road trip went fine, but the evening was rough with 4 hours of Levi fighting going to sleep until past 11pm and super smoky conditions with an Air Quality Index of 200+. It smelled like a campfire in town. 

​I had no time to think about the race, little time to hydrate and a concern that if the smoke didn’t improve it wouldn’t be safe to race. Fortunately, after 6 hours of rough sleep, the smoke had subsided enough that I felt safe enough to race.

When the race started, I simply ran hard and did my best to gauge my effort on the climb up the mountain. I felt super strong and won by about four minutes and ran the fastest time on that course. It took less than five miles to climb almost 4,000 vertical feet and I still felt strong near the top – it was remarkable. A good reminder that when the race starts, it’s all about running hard and that’s simply what I did. It was an awesome weekend and having Kristin and Levi at the finish and taking the gondola down together was absolutely a blast.

The next weekend at the US Mountain Running Championships everything leading up to the race went smooth...the complete opposite of Jackson. I got 9 hours of sleep on Friday night after easy travel, a 90-minute nap on Saturday, and a solid 8+ hours on Saturday night – I probably haven’t been this rested in over 2 years. My flight arrived so early that I even got to see part of the course on Friday night.  Ultimately, I had what I thought was the perfect pre-race prep.

A little before halfway into the US Mountain Running Championships, Joe Gray and I had pulled away and we built a pretty big lead as we pushed uphill. In that moment I likely got a burst of adrenaline and then I felt a breathing issue happen, something that’s happened only a handful of times before. It’s complex, but I’m learning there’s a strong correlation with races where I have big expectations, things are going well and then I have an issue that is similar to an asthma attack. The nearly “perfect” pre-race prep likely just added to my level of excitement and expectation that contributed to the issue on the mountain. I ended up fading to a 10th place finish.

I’ve learned that sometimes I can over-prepare and be too focused in the days and hours lead-up to a race. In Jackson, I just ran – I couldn’t even think about what to expect other than I knew I was running hard up a mountain. In Portland, I had time to over-prepare. While everyone needs to get in a competitive mindset, I’m learning that for me to have optimal performance, I need to actually “tone it down.”  There’s an appropriate balance, and these races were insightful for what I should do to find my optimal competitive mindset.

​One of the beautiful things about this sport is there’s always an opportunity to learn. And that can change with each season of the sport. While it’s disappointing to not reach what I was shooting for at the US Mountain Running Champs, I’m confident that it was ultimately a blessing in disguise that will better prepare me for the next big competition.