Handling Anxiety on Race Day

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Malanson, and this is the run to the podcast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team of Coach atrunnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. We tend to focus a lot of our thoughts about race day physical demands we'll experience, how we'll handle the pace, the fatigue in our legs, and pushing through lack of oxygen. But what about the anxiety and psychological stress we all face during races as well. If you race often, you know what I'm talking about? The anxiety and the days leading up to the race. the psychological stress we give ourselves, worrying about pace, and the mental fatigue that sets in during longer races like the half marathon, marathons, and ultras, These mental stresses can drastically impact our performances and maybe even more importantly, sometimes make the act of racing itself so stressful that it stops becoming fun. Well, to help you understand how to control the anxiety before and during races, we're interviewing doctor Simon Marshall. Doctor Simon Marshall is a professor of exercise science at San Diego State University, where he was the director of the graduate program in sport and exercise psychology. He's published over 100 scientific articles on the psychology of exercise and has been cited in the scientific literature over 10,000 times. Not only does he have the research background, but he's also currently the performance psychologist for the BMC racing team and elite world tour professional cycling team. with background out of the way. Let's jump into the interview. Today's episode is sponsored by magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. Their industry leading magnesium supplement helps you sleep better and reduce stress. Head to magbreakthrough.com. forward slash run to the top to learn more and save 10%. If you're looking for the most effectively dosed electrolyte drink for runners, Check out element. It's loaded with everything you need to replenish your electrolyte balance, and you can get a free sample pack by going to drink lmt.comforward/runnersconnect. Welcome to the show, Simon. Can you briefly tell our audience about yourself and what you do?

Guest [00:02:44]: Yeah. So my name is, Simon Marshall. I'm a psychology, consultant, mental skills trainer, and, I've got PhD in sport and exercise psychology. a master's in kinesiology and our undergraduate in sports science. So kind of through the sports science ranks, and then spent

Finn Melanson [00:03:02]: 12

Guest [00:03:02]: years as a professor in society, exercise, psychology, and behavioral medicine at the University of California, San Diego. But then I left that 2 years ago to work on, consulting full time with athletes and clients who are trying to change their lives so that they feel more confident, happier, and, engaged So, yeah, so now I work with my wife, Leslie Patterson, who's a professional triathlete, and we own braveheart coaching, helping training athletes of inter from endurance sports to get fitter, but also to enjoy the the journey a little bit more.

Finn Melanson [00:03:36]: Alright. Let's start to dig in here. It seems you have a really great balance of the science, but also the practical implementation of sports psychology. How did that start and what benefits have you seen from that?

Guest [00:03:48]: Yeah. So it really came out of a synergy between my background and my wife's background. So as a I was trained in sports psychology as multiple psychology folks are through academic university departments, and you're really taught from textbooks. You do internships and practical experience, but A lot of the textbooks that are training you to learn psychological theories and methods and and strategies. When you speak to real people, many techniques either don't seem to work or athletes kind of roll their eyes at, oh, I've gotta, you know, I've gotta meditate, or now that doesn't work for me. And so I was becoming a bit frustrated about the mismatch between how it was taught or practiced and the reality of what's needed. And then I married a professional athlete and And really that gave me a chance to peek behind the curtain of what it's like. I mean, I'm a competitive athlete myself, but not, I've never been good enough to do it for a living. So And what Leslie taught me was that a lot of the issues and the and the struggles that that she has, she may never even reveal to many people, especially not a sport psychologist who perhaps that you're concerned about. They're trying to analyze me and they're trying to find problems and so on. So there's a private world to athletes that we don't really know. And so we started talking about, well, where's the, where do these two fields collide or experiences collide so that we can develop some strategies that really resonate with athlete but it's grounded in psychological science. And so we wrote a book, and what we wanted to do is is, address topic that really met athletes where they were at. So in other words, athletes don't come to you and say, I need more psychological strength to run a half marathon. They say, I need to harden up. I throw the towel in. You know, they they talk in real people's language, you know, and heighten it's emotional, and, they they care about it. And so we sat down and we wrote down about 20 of the most common, things that athletes ask us for help with and those are in their words. And so they became the titles for the chapters of the book. So one of the chapters is I feel fat So how to cope with feelings of, you know, changing your body. one of them is, you know, honey to harden the fuck up. One of those one of them is setting goals is not my problem. It's the art of doing. So these things were really trying to meet the athletes with that. And then what we wanted to do, we we very much we unpack each sort of issue about what this is what it looks like in the voice of a real athlete, and we used our own athletes. We changed their name, you know, is to protect the innocent And then, we unpack the psychology of those topics. What's going on? Then we provide worksheets and strategies to help we finish with a case study about how we've actually done this with a real person. So we try to take it kind of soup to nuts as it were for each of these topics we hope that it resonated with athletes because it was really much our thinking, well, this is what we find works, but who knows whether it's gonna gonna resonate with others, and we're be we've been delighted at the response. So we're really pleased with how it's been going.

Finn Melanson [00:06:39]: That's great to hear. now let's start to dig into the practical stuff ourselves. Obviously, racing can be a huge mental stress for many runners how does this psychological stress influence athletes and runners during races?

Guest [00:06:52]: That's right. So I think the first thing is to recognize that we all have feelings that our body gives us thoughts and feelings that we don't want or at least we don't want in that moment. And it's a perfectly natural response to stress. And one of the big things we can do is to get really wary that we start to feel a bit nauseous on race morning or stomach churning or sweaty palms. We felt our legs feel like we got lead pipe strapped to them and there's the morning of the race and oh, what am I gonna do? You know, And these are perfectly normal responses. And when you look actually at the sort of the physiology behind a lot of these responses, they're all designed to actually make you faster. they're not actually designed to make you slow at all. So, obviously, feelings, though, that you need to go to the loo five times is to make you as light as possible. having sweaty palms we think is to do to help your grip if in case you need to clamber over things and so on. and obviously, you know, feeling as though that you're shortness of breath or hyperventilating to hyperoxygenate our blood and so on. So all of these effects, these physiological affect certainly our responses for the, usually, the fight or flight response. And one of the things that happens when you start to feel these things, our head then kick in, starts to analyze them. And one of the the kind of the fatal flaws of the human brain in many ways is the fact that we both have the potential to imagine things that haven't happened. I mean, it's a wonderful ability, and it gives us artistic, thoughts and able to think abstract men in the future. but it also is our undoing. And this is really the paradox of the human brain. Now on the one hand, many of the thoughts and feelings and responses we have are there to save our lives and to help us get out of trouble. But on the other hand, it can make many of our experiences utterly miserable And one of the most common experiences that athletes tell us, particularly, and and and if it ends sort of in a in a way that athletes end up dropping out of sport. They say, look, I don't wanna why do I put myself through this? It's race morning, and I just don't like feeling like this. And this nothing is worth what I feel like now, or when you're, you've started in a, in a race. So you're on the start line and you have what psychologists are politely called thoughts of escape. but we all know them as I'm never doing this again. Who talk who talked me into this? What was I thinking? You know, everybody look around and everybody, of course, is Lina Mortan fitter, stronger than you look, right? And you, so we have these thoughts and feelings. And one of the things that one of the biggest challenges that athletes have, and one of the biggest obstacles if you can overcome to conquering this is to recognize why you're having these thoughts and feelings. And so without sort of getting deep into some neuroscience or neuroanatomy is that your brain is a lot has evolved over millions of years, but it's evolved at different levels. So, a few 1000000 years ago, or sorry, 4, 5000000 years ago, we have in the middle of our break called the limbic system. We still have it. It's where the fight or flight response comes from. It's where little structures, things like the amygdala and the hippocampus, all these Latin sounding medical terms on. And that's really an emotional reacting machine part of our brains. And we and that's all we had at one point when we were sort of flopping out of the water for the first time, and before we develop the wrinkly part on the outside that helps us speak rationally. And that part of your brain, we call it a chimp, or we liken it to a chimp because it can have tantrums. It doesn't seem to listen to reason. it reacts really quickly and strongly. and it's the source of all emotions. So all of our emotions come from the limbic system or our chimp brain, and the primary focus of or purpose of that part of your brain is to keep you alive. So it doesn't want us to ever put ourselves our lives in danger, but because it hasn't really evolved much over the last few 1000000 years, you're on the start line of a half marathon. It thinks your life is actually in danger because you're gonna obviously end it's gonna end in awful humiliation, embarrassment, inadequacy, and everyone is going to be laughing at you, or you're going to be slow, and, and all of this nonsense that is being fed to us. but our our our our our sort of rational thinking brain, the wrinkly part, the frontal cortex, what we call the professor brain, is trying to put up a fight and say, listen, don't worry. It's just a 10 k. You've done this loads of times before, but it's really no match. for this very powerful limbic system chimp. And in fact, your, your, your chimp brain has been given 2 very important and powerful weapons so that we'll always pretty much always overpower your professor brain. And the first is that it processes information from your ears and your eyes, about all your senses, five times quicker than your rational thinking brain. So before you, you've even had a chance to look around the start line or notice that Oh my god. My arch nemesis is here, and I didn't think she was gonna be racing. And now I'm now racing for second or third instead of whatever it happens to be. is that your your eyes pick up on these little threat cues in the environment. And it sets off your amygdala and your limbic system sets off a whole cascade of hormonal and neurotransmitters that start to get you anxious and worried. And really, this is before your thinking brain has had even had a chance to say, oh, don't worry. It's just, you know, each their own own pace and all the, you know, the the self talk that we give to ourselves. And the second chemical power it's been given is that it throws a chemical brick at our frontal cortex so that we can't think our way rationally out of what it thinks is a life or death situation. And this is really important because it from evolutionary terms, if you're in a situation where your life actually is in danger, say that you someone has something in their hand could be a gun or something. You you can't rely on your brain to say, well, it could be a pen. Let me go and check it out. Let me know. You need to run the hell away. Right? So So these 2 responses overpower our frontal rational cortex, all the time. And most of us who get pre race nerves or pre race anxiety have been hijacked by our chimp brains. We're no longer in charge of our own brains at particular point, meaning our professor, the real you, is not in charge. And the easiest way to know whether you've been hijacked is to ask yourself a very simple question. And that question is, right at this moment, do I want to think or feel like this? And if the answer's no, Guess what? You've been hijacked by your limbic system. And so the first point is to recognize when you're no longer in control of your own brain and secondly is to use some strategies to wrestle control back or to manage that chimp brain because you'll never arm wrestle it back because it's five times stronger and five times quicker than you. but you can you can kind of, you know, use a bit of wrangling, cattle wrangling strategies to torque it off the ledge, to have it stop having the tension, like the two year old in the grocery store, a bit of bribery and a little sort of self talk and so on. And those strategies are really important to to to do. So that's the kind of the share, in a nutshell, that's the basis of why we have these sorts of feelings. The next part is obviously, what do we actually do about it?

Finn Melanson [00:13:47]: September marks the start of the fall. And for many of you listening, it either means you're in the final hard weeks of training or you're beginning that transition to tapering. Thus, this is the time when maximizing your recoveries paramount to your success on race day. And what's one of the best ways to do this? Sleep. Sleep is arguably the best legal performance enhancing thing available to us. In one of the best ways to improve your sleep quality is by getting enough magnesium. Why? Because the research shows that magnesium lowers cortisol levels so you feel less stressed and it increases GABA levels, which encourages relaxation at the cellular level, both of which help you enter and stay in a state of deep sleep for longer. That's why we recommend magnesium breakthrough by by optimizers. Unlike generic supplements, their magnesium breakthrough contains all 7 unique forms of magnesium, which is critical for maximizing its effectiveness. Don't miss out on the most relaxing sleep ever with magnesium breakthrough. For exclusive offer for run to the top listeners, Go to magbreakthrough.comforward/run to the top and use the code run 10 at checkout to save 10%. This special offer is only available at magbreakthrough.comforward/run to the top. Hydration and electrolytes are something we all seem to focus on for the summer, but start forgetting about once the fall weather starts to creep in. However, maintaining electrolyte levels as the temps change and as you gear up for your big fall races is critical to your performance. Maintaining healthy electrolyte levels will help you match optimize performances during your final big long runs in workouts, plus they aid in recovery so you can maximize the rebuilding process. And that's why we recommend all runners check out element this fall. It's loaded with everything you need to replenish your electrolyte balance with a 1000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium and doesn't include anything you don't like or need, like, extra sugar or anything artificial. even better, they are currently running a special deal where you can get a free element sample pack with any order. To get this special offer and to make sure you're hydrating properly this summer, head over to drinklmnt.comforward/runnersconnect. Let's dig into that. what are the strategies for effectively dealing with mental fatigue during the race?

Guest [00:16:13]: Well, one thing obviously is, we can reframe a lot of the sensations that we're having. So when psychologists use the word reframing, what they mean is just interpret things a different way. So we can look at the simp the physical symptoms that we're having, the nauseousness, the sweaty palms, the heavy legs, and we can recognize that all those things I'm glad I have them. You welcome those responses because it's preparing you to be the lightest fastest, fastest person that you can be on the day. And actually when you When one goes off and you start getting most of those responses or feelings evaporate, it might take a few minutes for them to happen. They usually go because If they didn't, they'd be a tar it'd be a terrible protection mechanism for survival. I'm actually gonna make you heavier, or feel heavy and more lethargic when you are running for your life. So most of those things do do escape us. So but there's a couple of strategies that we can use, and we talk about like categories or bins of strategies because once you teach athletes like what sorts of things work and why, you can make your own strategies that fit into these categories. So one of them is that we can, we can exercise, you know, exercise our chimp. So in other words, we can listen to our chimp who's freaking out and telling us that we're all gonna end terribly, and you're gonna be humiliated and people will be laughing at you. And one of the worst things that we can do is to try and confront that because you're gonna lose that every time and to say, I'm gonna try and purge your negativity. I'm gonna look in a mirror and say I'm strong. I'm confident. I'm a winner. That never works. A lot of the self help books in psychology tell us to do that, but we've never met anybody who's able to actually pull that off because you're fighting something you're not stronger. is so much stronger than you. So what you do, one strategy is called a chimp, what we call a chimp purge sounds a bit sort of silly. I know, but listen, hear me out. So What we do is you actually let your chimp brain run tap you, without you interrupting it with your professor brain. And I'll give you, like, some examples of what that sounds like in a moment. if I don't mind looking stupid. you let it ramped, until it runs dry. So until it runs out or starts to repeat it, self of all the things that it's scared or worried about. And it's a real curious phenomenon because when you actually do that and for most people, it takes between 2 to 15 minutes So if you only do it for 30 seconds, you've just given yourself the world's to yourself talk. So don't do it for a short period of time. you do it until you run out of things to say, and we all have our own brand of sort of chimp crazy, right? Some of this is about getting social approval for others. It's about their body image. We all have our own chimp nonsense that talks to us. but you let it ramp. So it might be, for example, you're standing on the start line and you say to yourself, you can either say it out loud, you you might do it in the car before you get out to start, you know, before your warm ups, you don't look crazy. Often we get athletes to write it down or to say it into their phone or to record it in some way, but you do it quite close or the night before even, but usually close to the start. And you say, and so So for example, someone might say, standing on the start line and you're looking at everybody here is fit it and strong with you. Why don't you just pick something that you're good at. You know that you're no good at this. You know that you never do well at this distance. Look at you. You're even fat in your your chunky monkey suit and you're squeezing out you got no business being here. People are gonna be laughing at you. You're gonna be laugh. And it and it's nonsense. Right? We know intuitive, rationally, it's nonsense, but This is the kind of shit that our chip brain is telling us because all of our emotions, the purpose of emotion is to drive decision making. So we have those emotions because it's trying to tell you nudge you in the ribs to say, go home. Don't put yourself through this. You know, go to the safe secure world of back in bed or back at home or watch TV and, right, but we know it's just a running race. So it's not really that big deal. But when you do it for 2 to 15 minutes, depending on when how long it takes you to run dry, what we see is something quite curious. We see blood flow in the limbic system drop. We see cortisol drop. We see serotonin and dopamine increase. We see all these neurochemical changes. actually calm us down. We actually are physically and biochemically calmer. And you know, most people have experienced this naturally. If you've ever been in an argument or just an emotion you know, exchange, and you've been crying. And you, you cry your way out the other side. You get so exhausted with crying that you kind of stop crying. is you're purging that emotion without trying to interrupt it with your professor brain. And you know that you're interrupting your chimp purge when your professor brain Oh, I know it's silly to think this, but that's a rationalization of the you're gonna be slow and you're fat and you're never gonna be do this. So you just let it run And what happens is not only does that when you feel you can't, you can't see, obviously, the blood flow changes and the neurochemical change in your limbic system, but what you feel is a bit like you walk with a bit more, you feel as though there's a weight lifted off your shoulders, but it's really critical that you do that for long enough And so we have our athletes do this all the time. And in fact, if it's a really big event, one that you really want to do well at, it might be a championship event or your A race for the year. You might even spend, you know, more than 2 or 15 min, 2 to 15 minutes the day before or leading up to it by letting yourself just be ruthless, right, and but not interrupting it. So the chimp purge is one great strategy of categories that's really helpful for people who, suffer from pre race risk. That's one category of strategies. Another category is to try and use the skills that our professor brain does have, which is facts and logic. They're the, you know, the truths there's kind of the the nonsense slayer of our professor brain is using facts and logic because that's all that part of our brain deals with. So we can start to confront some of the irrational nonsense that our chimp is giving us. And this is really the background of a lot of psychotherapy. you might have heard of something called cognitive behavioral therapy, which is really what that that's how it works is deconstructing the rationality of the thoughts that we have and replacing it with you know, alternatives that make more sense. So but what it's really important that we do is that we try and confront the actual things that our brain is telling us not It's not not sort of the, oh, my chimp is telling me you're gonna be last, and I'm my professor brain. No. You're not gonna be last. No. There's a chance you may actually be last, right? You can't try and bullshit, your chimp brain is out of pretending something that could happen is not gonna happen. But what you can do is to say, so what if this happens? So what if I don't have, the the race of my life? So what if I do actually finish in the bottom third? So what if I don't boss and qualify? So what if I and you start to deconstruct those events about, okay, let's look at life after this worst case scenario, and then what happens? And what you actually find is when you do that, far from the catastrophic consequences occurring, things that often the opposite end up occurring. And one of the things that we know, for example, is people are worried about being slow or letting people down or, you know, your families come to watch you. This is your big race, and you suck. Right? It's just it just happens. We're all gonna be there. And you feel like you've wasted their time and you've got people coming and you've, you've been on a team and you might have let them, you feel as though you've let them down. And And far from feeling that, what actually happens is you get off to get an outpouring of support. Right? So people love you, believe it or not, unconditionally, and they'll say, oh, better luck next time. You'll get back straight out there. They're not pointing fingers alone. They're not she's obviously not as good as I thought she was. because we all know we're all athletes as well, and we know that we don't have, we sometimes have good days and bad days. So you're trying to deconstruct these things into will this light, what's the likelihood of this happening if it does, so what? And you take that to the logical conclusion and you try and create little mantras or statements around those comments that you can say to yourself that, you know, the world still turns, the world, you know, I'm not gonna still wake up tomorrow and, and often it's to do with our relationship with failure. because none of us want to fail, but guess what? That's how we get better. We learn from things not going well so that we can improve. So that's the 2nd category of strategies confronting irrational thinking from our chimp with facts and logic. And the last category is to use a bit of the chimps like bananas as we know. So we can use a bit of deception and a little bit of bribery and reward. So one of the things that your brain your chimp brain hates is if you, if it's forced to think about the entirety of what it has to do. So thinking about twenty six miles, versus thinking about getting through the first five k, the second five k, the third five k. So whenever you fall, and this goes anything large project in life is that goal setting is so important because it helps us break things into manageable chunks. And when you're able to check something off, I've got that segment done. Your brain gives you a little squirt of dopamine, and dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps us feel good. Yes. It's a reward, and we like that feeling. But what it also does is it fuels and drives motivation. if it ever was a biochemical basis for wanting or needing to continue, it would be dopamine. So dopamine is so important to try and get our brains in a regular habit of getting. And now some people take this to the logical extreme and people who are addicted to substances, they're sort of dopamine rushing their brain with chemicals, but you can do it through sport as well or checking things off, having little segments that you achieve. So we We tell people never to run never to run a full marathon. Never think about the whole thing. Only ever run one small segment at a time. And it might even mean that you set your watch to, okay, my goal is to, if my pace target is 7 30s, I'm gonna look how I'm doing, and I'm only gonna try and nail that for the first three miles. And then, for miles 3 to 6, I focus on the next three. 7 thirties or 7 25s or whatever your strategy is. So segmenting effort into tiny chunks is really important. And the next, your brain loves repetition and, and, and it loves things that are sort of have this metronomic quality to it. That's why music feels so good. And it's a great ergogenic aid. We run faster, seep exertion goes down and so on. We listen to music, but we can't do that when we're racing. But what we can do we can trick it so we can count, for example, if you count in your head over and over again to 6 or 8 in time with your leg turnover, it somehow sort of down regulates the parts of our brain that are involved in over analysis. And it doesn't even mean that when you're running, you have to do this. You can do this on the line. You can just recite things, like, a little the more the thing that you're doing is, automatic. You don't have to too much about it. It might be saying your alphabet or, you know, counting to 10 over and over again. You're it's kicking in a part of your brain that we call your computer brain. I know that's 3 brains now, so it's really getting complicated. But it's really activating a part of our brain that kind of makes it much harder for the parts that give us all the mental anguish to work. So counting, Leslie will, will, rehearse and learn the words to the chorus of a song for every big a race. Like, she'll learn it like a script, like an actor learns a script, And when she gets into those moments where she's struggling, she'll sing this chorus to herself over and over again, And it's a way of of forcing that part of your brain, your procedural memory to kick in and to kind of turn off the part that are making us worried about, oh my god, I'm sucking. If I feel like this already, I'm never gonna and so it's a really important structure occupying your brain's bandwidth with things that are kind of stopping those other competing flaws. So there are the 3 kind of categories of strategies, purging, getting it all out, confronting with facts and logic, and then reward, and helping learn about how that you can play tricks on your brain so that part doesn't sort of it can't take over or hijack you back using songs or counting or segmenting.

Finn Melanson [00:28:13]: Thank you for getting so in-depth with that. Those are some really great strategies. I guess following up, what is your advice for when mental fatigue takes over or negativities overwhelming. How do you deal with that during the race?

Guest [00:28:27]: You can't really ever expect yourself to come up with great strategies when you're already in the hurt locker, right, because our chip brain is running wild when we're already at threshold. or, you know, certainly at race pace. So so what we're trying to do is say, look, you have to practice these things so that you're more better, you're better equipped to use them when you're in the race. And one of the key strategies outside of practicing these strategies, one of the key things that enables your brain to have a fighting chance of using these strategies is being able to cope with intrusive thoughts in the moment. So intrusive thoughts are thoughts of things that you don't want. I wanna feel excited but I don't I keep feeling as though I don't wanna be here, and this sucks, and everyone looks fitter. So you've got these intrusive thoughts. And the cornerstone technique for being able to do that is mindfulness training. So mindfulness sometimes it's a, you know, form of kind of meditation. We don't say meditation to athletes because their eyes will roll in their head, and they'll think they'll be less asked to listen to Enya and lie on the bed and or something silly like that. So so mindfulness training is simply being able to cope thinking the here and now recognize that you have thoughts that are competing for your attention. They're screaming at you from your chimps, say pay attention to me, but being able to block them out or or, I should say, in a more mindful way, recognize that they're there and let them float on by like you would seeing a firework display or clouds floating by. So we get athletes to practice that. One of the best ways that you can do that is an app called Headspace. So it's a free app, that teaches the backbone of mindfulness training. It's wonderful for athletes because they don't mention the word meditation We've used it with the beginners right through to world champion and pros. They love it 10 minutes a day that you practice it, and it's giving your brain teaching it the skills. So when you're in that moment and you're really suffering and you're trying or you're terrified it's the morning of and you're suddenly trying for the first time, say, I know facts are logic. So what? And, of course, you can't, it doesn't have much of a fighting chance if you haven't practiced it. But if you've already got the ability or develop the skills to recognize that that thought is coming and to just let it pass on by and there's some tricks or tricks that mindfulness and meditation training teaches you so that you can do that better. It's much easier to layer on these techniques of segmenting and counting and purging and facts and logic and so on.

Finn Melanson [00:30:53]: That's amazing. I hope all of the listeners really start to implement some of the stuff in these final weeks during many of the big fall races, to cap things off though, do you have any final thoughts or anything to add?

Guest [00:31:07]: I just think that what, you know, one of the the the big thing we we start to talk about is to recognize when you have these thoughts and things you don't want is that everyone has them. And my, if I if I add a magic wand, one thing I'd wish for on race morning, is to be able to see thought bubbles appear above everyone's hence. So you could actually read their minds. And despite what they look like, or how fast they are, you would be shocked to see nonsense that goes through people's heads and, and not that that is necessarily helping you, but it is comforting to know that it's pretty much a unit, the universal human experience. the human brain is wired to give you these thoughts and feelings because guess what? It doesn't want you to die, and it doesn't want you to be embarrassed or humiliated. The problem of course is that what we're doing in life, particularly when it comes to running, is anything, but that it's supposed to be fun. And that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter in big scheme of things.

Finn Melanson [00:32:22]: Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast.

Finn Melanson [00:32:24]: I'm your host, Finn Malanson, as always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every Please consider connecting with me on instagram at wasatchfin and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also, consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple podcast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premiere ad us to contest and giveaways, and subscribe to our newsletter

Finn Melanson [00:32:52]: by going to runners connect dot net backslash podcast. Until next time. I'd be training.