…and you’ve got your main event/target for the year coming up in a few days, what do you do to keep the nerves at bay and ensure you maximise your return on training investment?
Priority becomes 100% rest. Don’t stand if you can sit. Don’t sit if you can lay down. If you’ve been micromanaging your nutrition, stop that as well!
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Like looking thru a corner to your exit, think about looking to where you want to be during the event. Visualize all the key things you will do to be successful during the event. Inspire confidence. Carb up and rest.
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Eat everything
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Had a kid qualify for the CA state championship in cross country. She got so nervous she went out and ran a 5k on thanksgiving to “get to know her pace.”
She knew her pace. She qualified just over a week before. She had a great practice run, not so much come race day. Don’t make the same mistake. There is nothing you can do a few days before to get faster, but there’s a lot you can do to get slower.
Get lots of sleep, hydrate and go into the race confident!
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Set benchmarks along the way for both training and lead up competitions. Hit benchmarks. Know you are ready and know it deep inside your being Then just show and crush as you know it’s all there, you just have to execute the plan. The race is just a formality.
Be proud of what you’ve already achieved.
You’ve probably worked hard to hit your goals and made a few sacrifices along the way. Allow yourself to see the progress you’ve made and own it. Don’t purely base success or failure on the event itself.
Good luck with your A Event 
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Everyone says “sleep lots”, especially as I’m doing an ultra type event where sleep deprivation is key, but I am finding that a bit difficult, given I’m thinking about the event and I don’t have the training fatigue to help me get to sleep!
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In a similar boat. I find putting in some noise cancelling AirPods while playing a dry academic type podcast puts me to sleep in minutes. I can’t think of anything else and I barely have the focus to concentrate on the podcast. Really low volume helps too. Forces me to struggle to hear the podcasters.some TR podcasts work as well. Chad deep dive mode in the middle of the night will put me to sleep.
AACC? 
But yeah I am the same. I’ll be using podcasts on my event as well, sleeping at the controls is a bit noisy with the snoring and farting…
The other thing I am doing is obsessively checking the weather forecast, which is not really productive.
feeling this so much right now, coupled with some huge personal milestones that could happen immediately following my A race
Read ‘On Top of Your Game’ by Carrie Cheadle.
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Have you done and Ultra before? IME sleep doesn’t come easy after either. I usually get like 2-4 hours and my body is done with sleep. 
I did a 620k warmup ride and I got 3-4 hours of pretty decent sleep at 355ish. I am planning to try and take a bit more this time, probably 5ish hours per 24 hour period. I think I’ll be a bit faster than my plan time so I will probably take that back as more sleep… I don’t think I’ll have an issue sleeping…
Thanks - what’s the main message?
Its a book about sports psychology and mental skills, including dealing with pre-event anxiety and nerves. Plus a whole other bunch of useful stuff. And plenty of reading to keep one distracted from nerves / anxiety when tapering and training volume is low.
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I submitted a similar question to AACC podcast but they haven’t picked it up.
It’s not just that when you’re nervous, it’s tougher to fall asleep.
During taper, volume comes down so I’m less tired. Being less tired = it’s tougher to fall asleep.
Many endurance events start very early (for good reasons) so trying to fall asleep at 19:00 or 20:00 makes it tougher to fall asleep.
So what i do is :
- adjust “my timezone” in the weeks before the event so going to bed very early is less of a big change.
- sleep a lot 2-3 days prior to event to put zzz’s some in the bank.
Exactly, that’s what I was getting at when I said I don’t even have the training fatigue to help.
I actually have a 12:15 start time Sunday (it’s a 1500km audax, start waves every 15 minutes from 5am IIRC… I asked for a 10am start but got allocated 12:15). Should work out relatively OK I think, I am going to ride through till about 4am for my first sleep. I have got a plan after that, but I am not going to be too fussy about sticking to it!
Damn where did that couch go?
Depends when you sleep. If you sleep outside the traditional times the dorms can be pretty quiet and restful.