Rolling Meadows distance ace Vanessa Sanchez going through her pre-race routine
The weather has been beautiful in early April and outdoor track season is underway. With the start of outdoor some bigger time meets will be coming up, and this always means more nerves.
I’ve played many different sports, and although I often get nervous before any competition, I’ve found track is the sport that makes me most nervous. I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by many of my fellow runners. I don’t know if it’s the intense mental side of running, or the fact that we’re all just a bit high-strung, but pre-race nerves are a huge part of running. Last year before the state prelims in the 4x800m relay one of our girls was so nervous she threw up in the staging area right before the race. A couple minutes later she ran great and we qualified for finals, so whatever works I guess.
Liz Cox sporting her father's lucky high school socks
With these nerves, I found runners believe in superstition more than most athletes do, and most runners have a specific pre-race routine they must stick to. For races I always need to have straight hair, be wearing my lucky sports bra, and change socks before I put my spikes on. My dad recently gave me his pair of lucky socks that he wore for every track race in high school (at MSL conference school Forest View which closed in 1986). They’re pretty worn out, but I decided to wear them in a race this week as a throwback even though the black and gold colors don’t match my uniform.
Other runners believe they run best if the weather’s a certain way, or they might have a lucky track or lucky meet where they always run fast. On the flip side I sometimes have to convince myself I’m not cursed to run bad at a certain meet just because I’ve run poorly there in the past. I had a former teammate who used to decide if she was going to run well or not based on her bib number. I’m not sure exactly how the system worked, but I think if it was divisible by two it was a good thing.
Our first outdoor invite is coming up this Thursday so there will be some nerves among our team for sure. We will be at the Bruce Ritter Invite at Downer’s Grove North, one of my favorite meets. It rains at this meet every year, but I always think it makes me run better. I guess it’s another one of my superstitions, but rain or shine (or snow?) the Lady Pirates are going to be ready to run this week.
This is a shout-out to all of the runners with weird superstitions or quirky pre-race routines. If anyone has any funny ones, I would love to hear about them. Feel free to comment below or tweet… also a shout-out to all the runners representing Illinois so well at the Arcadia Invite this past weekend- especially outstanding job by Jesse Reiser (McHenry) and Zach Dale (Conant) going under nine minutes in the 3200 meter run. Lastly, here is a special shout-out to my long-time friend Vanessa Sanchez who runs for Rolling Meadows. In our triangular meet this week at Hersey, Vanessa won the 3200m in 11:08 and came back to win the 400m and run a leg on the winning 4X4. She is having a great season.
The dapper styling Liz Cox