How do I stop overthinking running?

It sounds backwards maybe, but in these thing it helps to realize how unimportant it is.

I always like to think of two General Patton quotes when it comes to competition and life in general:

1- courage is fear holding in a minute longer.

2- If a man tries his best, what else is there?

same as with anything in life, the more you do it the more comfortable you become with it. so just race more.

diarrhoea isn't because you are getting nervous/overthinking. it's almost always because of what you eat or sickness.

If you're an overthinker, embrace it. Make a plan. Include some contingencies for what you will do if conditions change. Then execute your plan. After the race, re-evaluate your plan. You'll never stop being nervous, but this is one way to channel those nerves into performance rather than into wasted energy.

If you are overthinking your workouts then you are probably trying to perform as good as possible these sessions. That means, probably you are already racing your workouts. Keep it with Jakob: never go full out in workouts, keep something back. Then, you can look forward to unleash yourself in the race and ran much faster than your workouts. Maybe this helps.

Meditation

And yoga

Don’t join the norweigan singles strava group. The overthinking there is ridiculous

With training and racing, focus on the process. Times are irrelevant, just try to execute your training properly (which means every day you have an objective but not a hard time goal. Accomplish the objective).

My daughter has trained very well this winter; I keep most of the workouts off the track so there is no way to measure it and evaluate. Or I'll give her a workout such as uphill tempo run (it's mountainous here), and there's just no way to convert it and overanalyze it. In the end, it's just "was the workout executed at the correct effort range?" (we use heart rate). If so, the objective was accomplished. We occasionally hit the track. One workout was particularly windy and my daughter was bummed at how slow it was. I just said "hey, you still hit the right effort level so it was still a good workout". You've got to think this way.

When it comes to racing, if you've executed the training plan correctly, you are as prepared as you could possibly be. Now you just go out and execute. It's a bit harder because you'll have time goals. Try not to. Make your goal something like "I'm going to run an even pace".

You say you're elite so maybe a good time for you is 4:10. Forget about the end time or the place and just make a simple goal of "I'm gonna run 63, 62 for my first two laps." If you can execute that, you should be in the thick of the race at that point and your nerves are gone (I only felt nervous until the gun went off and then it was impossible to feel nervous - maybe you are different but I doubt it).

At that point, maybe you have a bad day and finish poorly, or maybe you PR. But if you accomplished your objective to reach half-way with even splits, you can walk away feeling like you succeeded, and then fine tune for the next race. I don't ever recommend setting a finishing time goal; just set an intermediate objective that puts that finish time in play and leave the last half of the race as an open book. If you make it halfway right on plan your competitive instincts will take over and carry you through to the end.

Do lots of races or simply lots of parkruns. After a while you won't be nervous at all, in fact you will probably lose interest.

My sister was a strong runner, and I watched her develop tons of anxiety over racing. She was best on the team, best in the area, written up in the paper regularly, so every time she raced, people expected her to win, even when she was racing fast runners from further afield.

I think it's really hard to let that go. My advice would be to actually find something else important in your life in addition to running. Could be a girlfriend, or another serious hobby. Music, art, robotics, whatever. Some people thrive by fully focusing on running (or whatever their sport is) but others need to mix it up.

Also, you sound prone to anxiety / panic. You want to see a psychiatrist, perhaps one who is focused on competitive athletes. Talk therapy, meditation (try the Calm app) and/or medication may be appropriate.

You are young and you are taking your running seriously. Which is a good thing.

What you can't know yet is, that running is really not that important if you look at the bigger picture. And I say that doing running for over 40 years.

Maybe trying to race like you don't give a F.

I had some of my best races when some things were not perfect for the race. It was then when I realized that maybe some things don't matter that much for the actual performance of the day.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

Good luck!

first off, i think as a general matter we would all run faster in practice than meets. it's comfy. you aren't tired. you know your track. i think it's really that we don't usually all out TT at our home base. we train. so we don't usually realize we do practice faster than meets. but to me it's universal. every other sport i am in you execute worse in games and the challenge is to execute less badly and outrun the others underperforming their practices.

second, a meet is just glorified practice. same length laps. similar track. just different faces.

third, closer i got to college i switched from running on adrenaline and rock music to meditating and stretching. you want to be relaxed and loose-limbed when the sprint comes. i had a whole routine where i just chilled out, even at the line to start.

fourth, one thing we would do in XC practice to get fire in the belly of the best is pursuit work. people go off every 30 seconds in reverse order of how good they are. so the others have a head start. you have to chase them down. it's not the usual space for good runners and it makes them have to think through fixing disadvantage as opposed to running off the front.

if the coach won't do pursuit, maybe take the occasional interval or two, throttle down a little to start, sit back with more of the pack -- or even just a decent teammate -- and then tactically take off at the end. you need at least some practice that feels like the race will go.

along those lines, maybe your race plan is premised on front running that is easy at your HS but not how a serious race will go. you then need to sit down and figure out how is it that you, in particular, can win those races.

to be clear, that is not pouting over the heat sheet and how fast people are, or fussing about the crowd watching you. that's you take a few races right now, try different approaches, and figure out out how YOU win tougher races. is it front run? is it sit on the shoulder in second? is it mess around in the back then pass everyone a la jakob?

time is nice but i'd focus more on winning my races. if you regularly win then the times will often come attached to that. how am i beating that dude next to me.

First, stop referring to yourself as "elite". You're not, doesn't matter how good you are compared to other kids your age. You're just a kid that in the grand scheme of adults that are truly elite, you're incredibly slow. I'm not saying that to discourage you, but you seriously need to remove your ego from your brain and put things into proper perspective. Having fun, enjoying teammates, doing well in school, all of these things are far more important than "elite" running at your age.

And once you truly come to that understanding, if you're able to, you'll stop overthinking all the relatively meaningless minutia of racing and training. You'll start to get out of your own way and enjoy the sport, and yes, the mistakes that come with it.

My guess is your workouts aren’t so horrible but run them without watch or HR monitor, by feel

Race day Try adding a light set of 5x 200 36 -37 w 1’ in trainers prior to your races then give yourself 20-30’ to chill

As for the races stay in your flats until May and do the bare minimum to be in contention for first ~600m Begin moving up then.

also, sometimes being off the front too easy with your team can create bad habits or leave you where it's shocking when someone stays with you. the answer is work on the details, get rid of the bad habits, and try to either artificially make your training contested (pursuit, loafing), or go find meets with good runners and get used to how it can be.

also also, instead of wallowing in a bad race, learn from it. to me, what the really good ones often need is more races with the other really good runners. some of the postseason XC or TF stuff, cross country nationals, junior olympics. figure out you're not the fastest. figure out how you're going to compete within a tough contest. don't wallow. work through it.

if you wallow when you lose that's about as far as you will go as a runner. you need to be less emotional, more objective. can i be faster? more fit? did i get boxed in? did i go too early? is that race plan not working for me? what one will?

What's causing your anxiety? Is it your own internal expectation to perform/achieve something? Or is it external - parents, coaches, teammates? Who do you think you are going to (theoretically) let down if you don't perform well? What happens when you run poorly or not up to expectations? Is someone demeaning or criticizing your effort/result?