Have you ever sat around and really started to stress over things that really have no impact on your life what so ever but you can’t seem to get them out of your mind? I have written before about having a fear of racing and while I have come nowhere near solving this problem I can see that I’m not alone. We’ve all heard of the baseball player that can’t throw a strike or make contact with a pitch because they have the so called “yips”, but is this a real scenario or is it something that is made up by the sports media and several people have chalked up their difficult performances to the yips? Can we really work ourselves up so bad mentally that we perform at a level far lower than we trained for? Can a baseball player who hits everything thrown at him by the pitching coach really be suffering from anxiety when he steps on the game field and faces a real pitcher? There is no question in my mind that this is a real problem and it is becoming increasingly evident at running races. I not only run my fair share of races, I also watch quite a few and what I have witnessed over the last couple years is astounding.

Some people have the mojo when they show up to the ballpark or to a race and others immediately question why they choose to do what they do. I would love to say that I’m a person who thinks positive thoughts and loves to race but as I’ve written about before I absolutely hate to race and the word alone makes me sick to my stomach. We’ve all heard people use the expression “I just threw up in my mouth a little when I heard you say that” and that is how lots of runners and athletes feel on race/game day. What is it about going out and performing on a stage (albeit a small stage) that makes us want to shrivel up in a ball and go hide in the corner. Walking around the starting line pre-race you see four distinct types of people and those include the focused athlete who talks to himself/herself during the warm up, the nervous nelly who can barely stand still for a picture with friends, the relaxed I don’t care what my time is runner and finally the person who inevitably puts so much stress upon themselves before the race starts that no outcome is going to be a good outcome. Do you find yourself falling into any of these categories? I realize it is important to set time goals but is it okay if you go out and perform well but not meet your goal? Can you walk away knowing you gave it your best try? Were you confident going into the race and just had the yips? Are the yips caused by an undue amount of pressure you have put on your shoulders or is the yips an imaginary term we use for poor performances?

If you’ve ever run a race you’ve probably asked yourself several of these questions if not many more but how do we get over these problems and move to our so called happy place? Most of us wear some form of timing device such as a Garmin watch or eye the clocks closely throughout the race but what would happen if we just ran and quit worrying about the uncontrollable? I wear a Garmin on my wrist and I have it set to beep every mile to remind me to eat, drink when necessary but it also seems to hinder me when I’m racing. In a long race I can block out the Garmin and just focus on the task at hand but when a time goal is thrown at me I start worrying about every second that ticks by. Did I lose an opportunity to run a sub 3 hour marathon because I stopped to get a drink or use the bathroom or did looking at my watch and visibly seeing the 4 seconds that I lost affect me so bad mentally that I’m ready to throw in the towel?

Running is an art form and racing is a battle of the minds which most of us lose because we’re strong physically, have practiced our mental focus but we have no idea how to carry our mental practice over to race day. Have you ever lined up with the greatest intentions in the world feeling better than ever only to find out that something minor detours your progress and send you closer and closer to a DNF. I’ve read the mental focus books and tried the flash cards and mantras but I really have no idea how to apply them while I’m racing. I can keep telling myself the same thing over and over again but if my hip flexor is telling me something louder it always seems to win. Yesterday I had a 20 mile long run on the flat, boring as hell canal that runs through Phoenix and the entire week I was thinking about the 10 miles of picks at marathon pace I had to finish the workout. I wasn’t scared about going 6:50; in fact I thought it seemed like a pretty easy workout since I just ran 6:06 mile repeats earlier in the week but what I wasn’t anticipating was the wrench that was thrown into the mix on Friday morning. In my mind this was just an easy 10 mile run with a 10 mile push at the end at a pace I’ve ran very comfortably at just a month and a half ago. I was told this workout will be a great indicator for my March marathon and I completely lost faith in myself and was looking for an out. My out seemed to come shortly after I got home and looked at my schedule to see what I had for the next week when I realized I didn’t have 10 miles at marathon pace; I had 14 miles at marathon pace. This was no longer an easy 10 mile run; it was now a half marathon plus a mile. I sat there and told myself all the positive things in the world and when I texted friends to see if they wanted to join I told them it would go quick and be a fun workout but who was I kidding, I was thinking of it as a race. It wasn’t a timed race or anything that counted but if I didn’t hit the workout then I obviously couldn’t run 12 more miles at that pace four weeks from now.

I went to bed earlier than normal Friday and woke up relaxed and ready to run 20 strong miles. I had broken through the mental wall and realized that I’ve done workout like this dozens of times and lived through each one and today would be no different. We started off running a moderate 7:10 mile pace for the first 6 miles and then we started to kick it into gear and right away I was in the zone and we were rattling off consistent 6:48-6:52 miles and I didn’t have a care in the world. I knew that as soon as I got to the turnaround at the ten mile mark and we started to make our way back down the canal that I would be able to filter out any white noise my brain was trying to tell me but then 10 miles into the pickups I started to feel a little hitch in my hip flexor. It was nothing anyone would normally worry about but it was dominating my every thought. Every step I took the worse the pain seemed to get and the truth was that the pain was nothing worse than getting poked with a needle. You feel the initial poke and then the pain moves onto a dull sensation before finally fading away completely unless you tell yourself otherwise. I would take a step and the pain would magnify like I was just stabbed in hip flexor with a knife but was I actually in pain or did the fear of pain start to kill me mentally and give me another case of the yips? My mind immediately went to the death run at the Superstition Mountains and falling 3x in the first two miles because I could lift my leg up high enough with the hip flexor pain and I started to tell myself to quit. It was right then and there that I quit on the tempo run. I started to say it was the pain in my hip flexor and I could potentially cause more damage if I didn’t quit but the reality was I had the yips. As soon as I thought I may not make my goal I let the injury magnify and I cried wolf to myself and my running partner. I was weak and I knew it but the pain felt somewhat real. Call it a mental issue or call it being smart but there was very little wrong with me other than I get the yips when I put myself on a stage to perform. I can give a speech in front of a live audience, sell myself with confidence to the higher-ups in board meetings but I when I find a reason to quit racing, I quit. I completely check out and start to feel pity for myself and while I don’t want anyone to feel pity for me it sure does make it easy when someone says you’re making the smart decision by not pushing on if you’re hurt. We know when we’re hurt and while I had some hip flexor pain the real pain was in me for working myself up and getting a case of the yips. I could have finished the workout at a 6:55 to 7:05 pace and not one person would have known or cared otherwise but I put myself on this pedestal that if I don’t hit 6:50 on every mile there must be something seriously wrong with me. Have you ever done that to yourself? It is so easy to find an excuse and say I don’t perform well in serious situations but then why when we just go out and do a 35 mile fun we never seem to suffer those pains? It is because we have nothing to prove to ourselves and the prize is just finishing where in racing the prize is your time. Maybe it’s time to just run and whatever I run is what I run.

Watching thousands of people cross the finish line of races I can often tell which category they fall into and most of us suffer from the yips. We’re shell shocked the moment we cross the start of the timing mat and the fun goes away and turns into a job. Yes it is great to PR but do you want to set a PR so bad that you’re willing to quit mentally if you’re not going to get one? How many times do we see the super elites stop mid race because they’re not going to win the race? I understand stopping for injury or if you think the race is going to do more harm than good to your body but there is a lot to be said for the person who toughs it out mentally and crosses the finish line with a less than desirable time. We’re not going to run a perfect race every time we go but if you want to run the perfect race you also need to learn from the poor races. I’ve given in to phantom injuries too many times in races and thought the pain was just too much to go any faster but there is no way our bodies will let us continue if we have nothing left in the tank. The only time I can honestly say I left it all on the table was Pine to Palm 100 when I had to withdraw after 67 miles because I was throwing up for 25 plus miles and had nothing left but never once did a phantom pain take over my body and tell me I had to quit. This was a race that I was in serious pain and the hours of lying in the middle of the road were not for a pity party because I wasn’t going fast enough, I just couldn’t go on. This was a race where I was actually ahead of my anticipated time and there was no part of me that wanted to quit but my body threw in the towel before my mind. We hear people say “I was peeing blood or my IT Band was flaring up but did you really just quit because you weren’t going to get your desired time or can you actually say you withdrew for a legitimate reason? It’s okay to quit a race if it’s not your day but it’s time we start being honest with ourselves and not saying I felt injured but yet the next day we’re back at it again. No one cares what place you come in or what your time is but people do care if you’re a person who takes their ball and goes home the second things don’t go your way. I am starting to think this may be my problem when I race. While it may seem like speed is what makes one relevant in running, it’s heart and class that will keep you relevant. After all, this is running and very few runners remember who won a race but runners remember those that quit when they’re their not going to win a race. I don’t expect to ever win and I finish 99 percent of all the races I enter but figuratively I take my ball and go home the second the desired finish time goes out the window. I can call it the yips or I can call it fear but the truth is I should call myself weak and figure out how to fix it.

For anyone in the Phoenix area don’t forget about Grandpa Jim’s upcoming event for Sunshine Acres on February 16th. For more information be sure to check out his website at http://grandpajim.azurewebsites.net.

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