Why I Never Raced As Well As I Practiced

You can usually divide your team into two groups of people, the ones who race extremely well but don’t have that intensity at practice, and the ones who practice extremely well but it doesn’t quite translate into their races. Well I feel like I am a strong representative of that second group.

You see, I loved practice. Unlike many of my teammates I looked forward to it. I showed up every day and gave everything I had and more often than not I ran exceedingly well. I had confidence in my ability to dominate workouts and outperform most of my teammates. But when it came time to race, I always felt like I fell short of expectations, including my own. To be fair I never ran poorly, but I never felt like I raced as strong as I should have based on how I could perform during my workouts. At the time I wouldn’t acknowledge it, but now I can see that my weight definitely played a role. When running reps in my workouts I was staying within a percentage of my max effort, relying more on endurance strength than anything else. I was good at that. But at a meet when it came down to one run of max effort in the 400 hurdles, my pure speed and power was called upon. That is what I lacked. I knew this because my 100m time was slower with my eating disorder compared to my freshman year without it. My lean body could hang around for 10 reps of 200 at 90%; but if you asked for just one at 100%, I did not have the same energy and strength to expend like my competitors or teammates. Eventually my consistent performance below my expectations started to erode my confidence and reinforce my ED behaviors.

I went from meet to meet hoping that would be the day I would have a breakthrough and finally show the talent I displayed in workouts- in a race. But those meets came and went. I did my best to stay positive and optimistic, thinking as long as I kept training as hard as I could it was bound to happen. I wanted it to be formulaic. Put in the most work, get the best results. Want it the most, take home the win. But that’s not always the case. I could prepare to the best of my ability and then some, but once the gun goes off your body exerts all the energy it has and I was often walking back to the tent questioning where I went wrong.

What a perfect environment for my eating disorder to thrive.

I felt like the outcome of my race was out of my control and so I set about controlling everything else I could, my diet, my hydration, my training room visits, my sleep. I micro-managed those “controllable” factors to an extreme. That is partially why recovering while I was competing was so difficult. Pushing me to recover meant forcing me to let go of a regiment I thought would help me impact the outcome of my race and make me successful. And as I’ve said again and again, the most important thing in the world to me at that time was running, and to do it well.

What a shame that I could not see that what I was doing was holding me back. That micro-managing my intake and obsessing over my physique was preventing me from reaching my potential.

More than anything I want others who are in the same position that I was to learn from my experience. I want you to understand that I know what you are going through. I know how terrifying recovery is because your mind is telling you it will slow you down, that relaxing your rules and habits will take away from your identity as an elite athlete and lead you away from all the potential you are desperate to reveal. But I want you to hear my warning; that inner voice is wrong and continuing on this path will end in regret. I want you to finish your career with no regrets, your health, and a lifetime of amazing memories.

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