COLUMN: Pre-race anxiety is a normal occurrence


am racing in a half-marathon on Saturday. Just a few short days from now, I’ll be bouncing up and down trying to stay warm and shake off the jitters before the race begins. The sun will barely be rising on Hollywood Boulevard.

The crowd of participants will be wearing various types of dry-fit shirts in different shades of neon colors. Without fail, this is my least favorite part of racing. No matter how many times I run, the pre-race anticipation never gets any easier.

The anxiety comes in stages. The first wave, which I call the “tapering terror,” starts days before the actual race. Most runners taper, or run less mileage, in the week or two before their race because they want their legs to be fresh and rested before the big day. It starts to feel suspiciously easy to run less, and I worry about getting a false sense of confidence.

This is the first year I’ll be running the half-marathon with a time to beat. Last year, I ran my first half-marathon on a flat course in two hours and a minute. That means I averaged a little less than 9:20 per mile for 13.1 miles. It was a good start, considering I ran that race while studying abroad and never trained more than five miles.

In theory, it should be a breeze to beat that time. I’ve been training more, and I know what to expect when I’m racing this distance. But just last week, I was running on the treadmill and the nine-minute pace, which is less than 20 seconds faster than my average time last year, seemed exhausting. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep that up.

The next stage of pre-race jitters hits me the day before. I know from experience that what you eat and how much you sleep have a huge impact on how you feel during the race. I’m never too worried about making it to the finish line, but I am worried about whether those two hours of running will be fun and carefree or long and painful.

To avoid the latter, I usually eat a satisfying carb-loaded meal and try to get eight hours of sleep the night before. I also chug about a week’s worth of water in that one day. If there’s one thing that can make running awful, it’s being dehydrated. Somehow, though, all the pasta and water in the world doesn’t put the day-before doubts”to rest. I usually end up rolling around a little bit before I fall asleep, wrestling with the idea that I should have done something different in my training.

By the next morning though, those doubts give way to the race day reasoning. It’s a more subdued kind of nervousness because at this point, I’ve usually already accepted my fate and my lack of training. I will pull on my race day outfit (the dry-fit shirt that fits just right, a pair of running shorts that don’t ride up and a pair of socks that don’t fall down), and maybe add a few last-minute songs to my running playlist.

As I say goodbye to my belongings at bag check and find a bathroom in the minutes before gathering at the starting line, the craziness of it all starts to set in. Why would I pay to get up before the sun rises just to run on a street usually filled with cars? In the moments before the race begins, it’s cold and crowded and the butterflies in my stomach make me feel a little uneasy.

But by the time the gun goes off, all the worries fade away. I love running so much because I can be in the present. I can take it one step at a time, and every step feels so familiar, like I’ve done it a million times before. Yet each race is new and challenging, which makes conquering the pre-race fears and the race itself all the more satisfying.

Meghan Coyle is a senior majoring in print and digital journalism. She is also the online managing  editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Chasing Pavements,” runs Tuesdays.