PSYCH 101: Performance and Anxiety

These last two weeks, I've been experiencing some anxiety about both the "medium" and "long" runs for the week. The night before, I feel kind of irritable (poor Rick), and my heart races a little bit before I fall asleep.

With the "Medium" length run (which has been 4 miles these past two weeks), I think it's mostly because it is on a work morning (usually Wednesday), and I'm anxious that I have to get it done in time to get ready for work and then also semi-function through the rest of my day despite my run. With the "long" run (which has been 6 and 7 miles these past two weeks), it's of course because it is a distance that I haven't run yet, and I'm nervous about how hard it is going to be.

It really hasn't been THAT bad, but it got me to thinking . . .

What is the relationship between performance and anxiety? That is, do we generally perform at our best when we are very anxious and excited or do we perform at our best when we are not at all stressed and excited?

The answer is, neither one. We usually perform at our best when we are moderately excited, that is, sort of in between caring too much and not caring enough. This is an issue that has received a great deal of attention over the years from psychologists interested in human performance. It has been studied a lot and, although there are some situations in which it seems best to be very excited, an endurance activiity like training for and running a marathon is not one of them. It has been fairly well established that we do our best at endurance activities under conditions of rather low anxiety.

What this means for me is that it will be in my best interest to avoid getting very worked up for my training runs and to especially stay calm on marathon day!

When you get highly anxious, your sympathetic nervous system (think adrenaline) becomes activated and this results in all sorts of unhelpful (for marathoning) physiological changes in your body. Examples include increases in heart rate, blood pressure and loss of body fluids through excessive sweating and urination, and none of these will help you perform well in training for and running the marathon, although they are great if you need a burst of strength for a very short period of time.

So far, I've tried to use the nervous energy to make sure all my equipment is adequately prepared for the next day's run. As far as feeling anxious as I'm falling asleep, I've just been acknowledging the anxiety and then trying to RELAX it away. Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer gives several good ideas for visualization exercises that can diminish the anxiety. Maybe I'll work on those sometime too.

Here's the link to one of the articles I found while researching anxiety and athletic performance.