High Heart Rate Before Race

Audio Transcript

Coach Michael: Hey Runner Connect fans. Welcome to the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

If you have a question that you’d like one of our expect coaches to answer in an upcoming episode, you can submit it at runnersconnect.net/daily.

Today we have a question from Lisa. She asks, “My heart rate always spikes high, right before the start of a race. Do you have any strategies to prevent this?”

Michael: That’s a great question Lisa and one that I have a ton of experience with, and I’m excited to talk about it.

I want to start with a personal story from my own running that I think is very relevant to the topic at hand.

Basically, when I was a freshman in college at Virginia Tech back in like 2008, I had an episode, during a workout, where right before the start of an interval, all the sudden my heart rate just became very high and went crazy.

I had a tightness in my chest and I didn’t know what’s going on and I tried to go through the interval and I run, probably one of the slowest intervals of that distance that I’ve ever run.

I had no idea what was going on.

Anyway, it didn’t really occur for a while and I think my sophomore year is when it finally happened right before race, where my heart rate just got jacked. I ended up barely making it through an 8-kilometer cross-country race.

I made it maybe a thousand meters and even then, I was about to fall off the back, in a race that I was favored to be maybe top 10 or 20 or so in the race, and yet I was falling off the back of the pack.

Fast forward to the next year, my junior year of college and it happened again in a workout. I finally decided that I needed to really determine what was going on.

At first, we had we had looked at stuff like my nutrition. Maybe we thought it was like– I’ve had issues with acid reflux in the past.

Ultimately, I decided that it’s coming from my chest. There’s something going on and I think it’s my heart.

I mean there was one time I took my heart rate during one of these episodes and it was like over 230-240 beats per minute which shouldn’t be possible for your heart rate to get that high.

Obviously, there was something going on and I ended up going to the doctors, cardiologist and getting all the stuff sorted out, and I ended up having to have a surgery that was outpatient.

I was in and out in a day, but it was a pretty stressful day and basically they just stuck wires up through arteries in my groin and ended up with SVT (super ventricular tachycardia).

Basically, it’s an extra pathway in your heart, which makes it to where your heart will just go into overdrive. it’s beating so fast that it’s like it’s not beating enough.

It feels like you’re not getting enough oxygen to your muscles, you feel completely exhausted, and it’s a very debilitating condition.

That surgery was very serious, and that condition was very serious. That’s something I wanted to start off with because I don’t want to talk about the other stuff in this up so without having said that first.

What I mean is let your doctor know. Whatever doctor you’re working with, just let him or her know. Say that you are having some anxiety and my heart rate gets high before races. Do you think it’s something serious?

They’ll be able to do either the necessary questions or the necessary testing, to see if it’s anything serious. I highly recommend that before even taking any of these other steps.

It comes down to anxiety most of all.

Races are a bit of an anxiety inducing event. You train so hard, you work so hard in training, you train every single day or I don’t know how many hours per week, you’re eating right, you’re getting to bed on time; you do everything.

So much of your life is still dedicated to this one thing, this one race especially with marathons.

This isn’t like 5k where you are just running a bunch of them. This is marathons, half marathons where you’re doing a lot of training for one race marathons.

You really can’t do a whole lot more than like two or three a year tops. Most people do more like two a year or two big marathons a year. That’s a lot that’s basically six months of training in effect for one race.

Having a little bit of anxiety before the race is really nothing to worry about.

It’s obvious why you’re feeling anxious. You’ve trained so hard and you don’t want things to go wrong on race day. You’re anxious about that, not meeting your goal, you’re anxious about running slow.

Your body is also anxious about the pain it’s about to go through.

You are about to put your body through a very stressful experience and that alone is going to produce anxiety. Your body is saying please don’t do this to me.

Of course, that’s a little bit exaggerated because this isn’t like the 400 meters. You’re not necessarily doing something where you can have this like crazy amount of lactic acid build up and be an intense pain.

It’s more of the marathon half marathon long distances. It is more like a dull pain. I’m not saying it’s easier because it’s for so much longer, but it really isn’t that intense pain that you get with shorter races.

What can you do to mitigate? There’s some relaxing activities that you can do. I think there’s a lot that goes into this.

One thing to start with is to look over your training log. Look at it and look at everything you’ve done.

Look at all the great workouts. If you’re with our Runners Connect program, you typically will do the 2 by 6-mile workout maybe a few weeks or a month or two before your goal marathon.

Go look at your splits from that, go look at what you did on that day and you’ll see that that was a sweet workout.

Look at your long runs, your mileage, and everything you’ve done. You’re going to start to say that this isn’t that big of a deal.

Maybe I have nothing to worry about because I haven’t run 26 miles in training, but I have done a lot of really good work that’s going to prepare you for this.

Something I used to like to do a lot, when I would race, is find something on the day of the race.

Obviously, marathons are going to be early in the morning, but you’re also usually getting up early to eat breakfast and all that, you want to find something that’s relaxing to you.

I would mostly run track races and usually they’d be in the in the afternoon or late evening and I had to find ways to relax during the day. I had to because I’d be so nervous and anxious.

I remember running races in like California and Florida where in Texas where it was hot, so I would like to walk.

I love to walk before the race to get some stress out and what I would do, when I was in hot places like that, I would go walk in a parking garage.

If there was a parking garage at the hotel, I would walk there. I go find one and literally just walk around and was out of the sun. That was relaxing for me.

Another thing was I loved just sitting down at a table with a cup of coffee, with your pre-race coffee.

I used to have it two or three hours before race time.

I would have a time to just sit there and just relax. if I had somebody like a family was coming out to see me race, I would go hang out with them, maybe sit with a teammate or someone else running the race whatever.

I found that relaxing.

Now to relate that back to the beginning of this episode when I talked about my medical condition, that exacerbated the medical condition. It made it worse when I would have caffeine.

That’s something to think about if you’re having like major anxiety. Look at your caffeine intake. If you’re like really crushing the caffeine on race day, it is possible that that’s having an effect.

I considered it when I have a cup or two of coffee before the race, a very relaxing thing that I very much enjoy, and I feel like it helped my anxiety before the race.

Some people wear headphones. I mean marathons and halves longer distance races, will let you have headphones and let you have music. If you run with music on a regular basis and train with it, I think that’s a great idea.

Use music during your race.

Use music that will remind you of all the training that you’ve already done. Use music that will take you back to that 18-mile-long run with a fast finish where you really crush it and felt great.

Use music that will take you back to a relaxing point of life. Whatever you need to do, music is one way that can help.

Deep breathing is another one. You want to make sure you take nice deep breaths, really belly breathe as much as you can, and try to relax.

Don’t let yourself get in that fast pace breathing, really anxious, don’t even let it happen or start. You want to really do some nice deep breathing.

Try to try to smile and laugh a little bit.

If you’re in the corral at Boston, this is a time when in Boston, New York City, Chicago, a lot of people say that that can be a very stressful event because you’ve never been in a corral like that.

You’ve never been around all these people, you never had to stand in one place for so long before race.

I think there’s some degree of it where you should just look around and just smile and be like, “Oh my goodness! I’m running this huge historic marathon.”
There’s almost a laughing part. I would literally laugh at myself for being so anxious.

These are sometimes races where I was running for a conference title or I was running for in NCA National Championship, or running for an Olympic team, and honestly sometimes I would just have to laugh at the situation.

Laugh at myself for being so anxious because I was like, “What is this doing for me? What is the anxiety doing for me? What is all this worry doing for me? It’s doing nothing. It’s not helping me accomplish my goals.”

That’s where that positive thinking comes in mind and if your smiling and laughing, those positive vibes are going to go to your brain as well.

Studies have shown it affects your brain functioning. You want to smile and laugh, have a good time. You’re not out there to torture yourself. You’re not out there because you have to. You out there to have a good time in the end.

Go out there have a good time. Smile, laugh, put some headphones in, whatever you need to do. Get that anxiety down, have fun, enjoy it, and just try to relax.

One last thing just let your doctor know to make sure.

At your next check up with your doctor, if you’re having a high heart rate before races or anything like that, just let your doctor know. Hopefully it won’t be serious, but you just want to make sure just in case.

Runners Connect fans that’s it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. Don’t forget to submit your questions at runnersconnect.net/daily and we’ll feature your question on the show.

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