Friday Tri: Nerves

Everyone is nervous before a race, but triathlon has extra chances for nervousness because there are so many technical transitions. In a running race, you put on your gear before the race start and the gun goes off and you simply run. It's possible to take a wrong turn, but it doesn't happen often. In a swim race, you are usually in a pool and the problems you have are limited. In a bike race, you can get lost or crash, but still, you are dealing with bike problems only. But in triathlon, because you are doing three different sports, your chances to make a mistake more than treble. You must learn to seamlessly move from one sport to the next, despite the different gear that each sport requires.

Three things that help me deal with nervousness before a race are:

1--going through the transitions, practicing them the week before in real time, and thinking about them in my mind.
2--realizing that nervousness is actually energy that will help me once the gun goes off and the race begins.
3--having confidence that I will be able to deal with whatever happens. (This is helped by the fact that I have dealt with almost everything in the past from rough swims in open water to terrible wind to bike crashes and mechanical problems.)

If you can practice the transition from swim to bike before a race, you will know that you feel strange suddenly moving from a horizontal position to a vertical one, and to suddenly begin running upright rather than swimming can make you feel dizzy or nauseous or simply unable to move quickly. You may be cold from the water, and your fingers will not work properly. You have to think about taking off the wetsuit, taking off goggles and cap, and getting to your bike. Which bike rack is it on? And when you get to it, what do you have to put on?

I always think of a short list of things I have to do to move from bike to swim, and then I repeat it in my mind at the end of the swim, until I am on the bike. Lately, I have made the list smaller as I have decided not to wear socks in most races and to leave my shoes on the bike so that I slip my feet in later, while the bike is moving forward. This is tricky and I don't recommend it to beginners. It's taken me eight years to be ready to do it. But it does make transition faster to only have three things to do, take off goggles and cap, put on helmet, grab bike. 1, 2,3.

In general, I think that the same rules of dealing with nerves applies to almost everything that life hands to you. You practice what you know you will have to do until at some point it becomes automatic or at least easier. You make lists in your mind that help you get through. You accept that nerves are a part of any difficult endeavor, and you learn how to put them to use as raw energy. And you do what you can to deal with what will happen, then accept that you cannot control everything but believe that you will be able to deal with it when it happens.

There are things you control. There are things you do not control. The things you can control, you control vigorously. The things you can't control, you let go of.

A friend of mine was talking to me recently about her nerves. One of her specific concerns was if she had a mechanical problem with her bike. She didn't know how to change a tire, she said, and she didn't have a kit on her bike with an extra tube and air. I told her that she should never ride without those things and to go immediately and get a kit from a bike store and spend an hour learning how to change her tire. If you can control something, then do control it. Don't worry about it needlessly. But it's also true that the nervous energy she has will be expended in learning how to change a tire and it won't be as hard to go to sleep the night before the race.

Don't worry about things that you can control. Control them. Don't worry about things you can't control, either. You can't control them. It's as simple--and as complex--as that.