Hello all I am a collegiate distance runner and I am posting this to see if anyone knows or has experienced anything similar to me. This season has been extremely frustrating as though my workouts show I am probably the fittest I’ve ever been but my races are horrible. My coach seems to just get frustrated with me and laugh at my face when I tell him this.
When I race I get a pain in around my upper abs/ stomach area and it becomes a game of just finishing as opposed to racing. I have been racing 5k’s for about 7 years now and I have not really experienced anything like this when racing. Some seasons I have had a pain like this in the first race but then it goes away for the rest of the season. Some people tell me it’s race anxiety but I don’t see why this would be the case after 7 ish years in the sport but maybe stacking bad races one after another could be doing something mentally.
I have tried everything under the sun as far as diet for pre-race. Ive done what I’ve always done. I’ve tried some new foods. I’ve even gone as far as doing a purely liquid diet and even then I get horrible pain. In the 5k I will be running the first mile pretty comfortably (for a race) my HR being around low to mid 170s and then the pain starts around lap 5-7 and my HR will spike to 190+ and even if I’m giving it my all the pace will slow down over 10 seconds per lap.
Is it race anxiety? Is it IBS? Is it diet? Any ideas? Sorry for the long post but I wanted to be as detailed as possible. If anyone is willing to help I would appreciate it!