Episode 46: MARATHON PREP #4 The Mental Game - How to Conquer Pre-Race Anxiety 🧠

Episode 46: MARATHON PREP #4 The Mental Game - How to Conquer Pre-Race Anxiety 🧠💬 Got a question or feedback? Write us at: [email protected]☕ Buy a Gel Caf for Lactate to support the work: ko-fi.com/lactateSummary: Unmanaged pre-race anxiety creates a metabolic tax that burns fuel before the starting gun, affecting 78% of runners and causing a 10-15% performance decrement equivalent to being undertrained. This Competitive State Anxiety activates the Sympathetic Nervous System, spiking cortisol and adrenaline to accelerate glycogenolysis, potentially depleting 30-50% of your glycogen stores in the first hour. Instead of trying to calm down, you must reappraise cognitive worry as excitement, aligning your mental label with your high physiological arousal to optimize performance. Acknowledge taper-induced "phantom pains" as normal neurological withdrawal, and use periodic smiling to improve your running economy by 2.8% while mitigating stress-induced gut permeability. Remember Paula Radcliffe’s 2004 collapse, where extreme pressure caused the brain to shut down the body; elite athletes succeed by interpreting somatic arousal as a facilitative signal of readiness rather than a debilitative threat.Keywords: competitive state anxiety, sympathetic nervous system, glycogenolysis, reappraisal, running economy, phantom pains, gut permeability, central governor🎙️ Lactate, the podcast that deciphers science to improve your performance.Key references :Martens, R., Vealey, R. S., & Burton, D. (1990). Competitive Anxiety in Sport. Human Kinetics.Hanin, Y. L. (1997). Emotions and Athletic Performance: Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning Model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10585167/Brooks, A. W. (2014). Get excited: reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24364682/Brick, N. E., McElhinney, M. J., & Metcalfe, R. S. (2018). The effects of facial expression and relaxation cues on movement economy, physiological, and perceptual responses during running. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319935871_The_effects_of_facial_expression_and_relaxation_cues_on_movement_economy_physiological_and_perceptual_responses_during_runningThornton, O. (2025). The Compounding Mechanisms of Pre-Race Anxiety and Exercise on Gastroesophageal Reflux in Endurance Runners. https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/articles/5999nj98xVoices generated by artificial intelligence from the scientific report produced by the Lactate team.