In the build-up to a race, whether it’s your first or you’re chasing a new PR, it’s completely normal to feel a mix of excitement, nerves, and uncertainty. Just like physical training, mental training works best when practised consistently, not only in the final days before the race.
Mental preparation isn’t just about settling pre-race nerves; it’s about building the strength, resilience, and race-day confidence you need to perform at your best.
Building Mental Strength Throughout Training
One of the most effective ways to prepare mentally for your race is to treat your training sessions, especially the harder ones, as opportunities to strengthen your mindset, not just your legs! It’s completely normal for self-doubt to creep in during a tough interval session or long effort. Training is meant to challenge you, and those moments of discomfort are where real mental resilience is built.
A helpful way to refocus your mind during a difficult session is to remind yourself that while it feels uncomfortable, you’re almost always capable of more than your brain is telling you in the moment. This shift from “I can’t” to “I can keep going for just one more minute”, is a skill you build session by session.
Build Confidence by Recognising Progress & Resilience
After these tough sessions, take a moment to recognise the mental achievement as well as the physical one. Logging how you felt in the private notes section of your Strava can help you spot patterns, track what mental strategies worked, and build a bank of evidence that you’re stronger and more capable than you think!
Regularly review your past workouts to remind yourself what you have achieved. Seeing your progress laid out, your consistency, your improvements and the sessions you completed even when they felt hard, helps build trust in your preparation. Let that reinforce your confidence.
Trusting Your Training Data
One of the most powerful ways to build race-day confidence is to trust the data you’ve produced throughout your training! Your plan doesn’t guess your predicted race pace, it calculates it using the sessions you’ve completed and your consistency. Every interval, long run, tempo, and easy run contributes to a clearer picture of what you’re capable of on race day.
It’s normal to feel doubt over what you’ve done and what Runna thinks you can do. If you ever look at your predicted pace and think, “Really? Me?”, remember that your predictions are built from your training trends, not wishful thinking. If you’ve consistently hit the prescribed paces in training, especially in harder workouts, you’ve already proven the ability your plan is reflecting back to you!
A simple mental framework can help: If you can hit the paces in training, you can hit them on race day! Race-day adrenaline, fresh legs, proper fueling, and the cumulative impact of your training block all give you an extra boost.
Reframing "Failed" Workouts
Not every session will go to plan, and that’s completely normal. Instead of viewing a tough workout as a failure, see it as evidence of resilience. Completing even 70–80% of a challenging workout builds far more mental strength than skipping it entirely. Showing up, trying, and adapting teaches you how to keep moving forward when things feel difficult, exactly the skill you’ll need on race day.
Remember Coach Anya's tip: A week of B+ efforts is far better than one A* run and nothing else".
The “One More Minute” Rule
When you reach the hardest moment of a session, don’t quit immediately. Slow down, take a short walk, or ease the pace, but keep going for just one more minute. This rule teaches you that you can stay in the discomfort without giving up. The ability to continue, even at a reduced intensity, builds confidence and reinforces the idea that tough moments are temporary and manageable.
When You Should Stop
Protecting your long-term consistency always outweighs finishing one workout. If you feel overly burnt out and your body feels like it's fighting too much fatigue, sometimes it really is better just to take a break. Your Runna plan balances your training with deload weeks to make sure you avoid this feeling.
Develop Mental Tools & Strategies
Here are some of our favorite mental strategies to keep pushing when it gets tough.
Visualization: Repeatedly imagine race-day scenes from the start line, to your pacing, to the toughest miles and the finish. Visualising both ideal scenarios and potential challenges can help you mentally rehearse handling them.
Focus Anchors and Form Reset: In tough moments, ground yourself by focusing on a single controllable element – your breath, stride rhythm, arm swing, or cadence. Shifting your attention to one of these “anchors” interrupts negative thoughts by giving you something practical to focus on, helping you stay calm and in control under pressure.
Chunking the Effort: Break the run, rep and race into smaller, manageable sections. Instead of thinking about the whole distance, focus on getting to the next landmark, mile, kilometer, or song. This helps reduce overwhelm and keeps your mind present. Keep repeating this throughout a hard effort until you get to the finish.
Practise Your Pre-Session Routine
Feeling mentally prepared on race day starts with a following a routine you’ve already rehearsed. Use your training to practise the elements you’ll repeat on race morning: your warm-up, breathing exercises, mindset for the first few kilometers, and even your fueling or hydration cues. The more familiar these feel, the more mentally prepared you'll feel on race day because you’re simply repeating what you’ve done many times before.
It also helps to build a flexible “if/then” plan for challenges. For example: If I hit a tough patch, then I’ll focus on my form… If my pace drifts, then I’ll reset with a deep breath…" Pre-deciding your responses keeps you calm and in control when things get hard.
You can even simulate parts of race day during training, like waking up at the same time, eating your race-day breakfast, or practising your warm-up, to reduce surprises and boost confidence.
As Coach Steph puts it: “The more you familiarise yourself with your plan, the more relaxed you will feel.”
Takeaways
Mental preparation isn’t something that happens the night before your race, it’s a skill you build gradually through every part of your training. By learning to stay present in tough sessions, recognising your progress, trusting the data behind your plan, and reframing setbacks as opportunities, you develop the resilience you’ll need when your race gets challenging!
Whatever your goal, Runna is here to support you through all your training, giving you the structure and confidence to keep moving forward.