How to not give up during races?

Begin a relationship with a higher power

Most times its not a lack of effort on your part, but a lack of endurance. Train your aerobic capacity - lots of running at tempo pace. This includes sustained tempo runs of over 30 mins if you just do repeats at tempo pace you'll never get there.

Take it one step at a time. That next step ain't so hard. It's when you start thinking about how much more you have to run that negative thoughts creep in. One step at a time

i think you're going about it backwards. practice shouldn't be full gas 100% most of the time. it should be getting you fit and prepared for the meet. as a distance guy you should have some sort of a pace worked out which you train for in practice and can execute in a meet. if you have trouble with focus, pick someone you know is right around you in meets, or has the right seed time, and sit on their shoulder. assuming they execute the correct pace, sticking to them keeps you honest.

also, i think that trying to pull on the next guy up also keeps you honest, even if they are 20 yards up. pace aside, tap into "competing." you don't want to go nuts but you want to be competing for one place better.

your response is probably you start to panic and then overcompensate and ease up. what you need to do is land in the middle someplace and then execute a planned pace that is based on feel, and that feel is trained into you in practice, and that feel is something other than slamming the gas to the floor. you may not have much idea what pace to hit because you train too hard and run practice too fast and it has nothing to do with what makes sense on meet day.

You need to have a goal in mind, and run the pace needed to hit that goal. I'm not sure if you're 'giving up', but if you're constantly setting goals that are overly ambitious, once that goal is gone during the race people often give up. So if that's you, set more realistic goals. And once you beat them, inch it up a bit more.

Get fitter so you can rely on the physicalities of racing more than the mental/pushing through aspect

You left your race in your workouts, both mentally and physically.

You got to know your present absolute best possible result. Then you just run the race with a good marginal over that highest possible level. Then you should have strength left to finish fast in the race.

Sometimes you’ve gotten more fit than you think and don’t race accordingly.

It’s tough to have something left after your race.

This isn’t about your training, it’s about your racing. You can’t really practice racing. You need actual race experience at this fitness level.

i think he'd be befuddled but happy if he had improved as you suggest, and he ran a PR after this weird alternation of press then relax. i don't think he's saying i used to run 19, i practice like i'll do 18, but because of this stuff it's 18:55.

to me he's saying he goes foot way off the gas after initially pressing, and in relaxed mode has lost all sense of pace. when he also says, i train real hard, that to me screams, he goes too hard in practice, at what is usually a few days of shorter distance intervals or fartleks or whatever, he doesn't actually work on sorting out a 5k race pace, and so he's stuck on race day with either the gas floored or he eases too far off and runs a slow time.

i had a little bit of trouble with this as a sprinter trying XC, it took some work to get it. as someone who could run a quick quarter i had lively legs relative to distance folks and sometimes would find myself, initially feeling fresh, out with the lead pack, or even in first. and wouldn't pay until late mile 2. it took some work to shift into, ok, here is a pace i can hold for 2-3/4 mi before a sprint finish. and you can't sort that on meet day, which is what it sounds like he tries. you need to have pace sorted and know it by feel before you show up. you then do what you practiced. if what you practiced is jam your foot down on the gas, and you panic and say, crap, i can't do this 3 miles, what is left you practiced?

that's also part of why i said, compete. if you've kind of messed the pacing you can guess what you have in the tank and then try to work to the next guy up, or at least defend your position best you can.

to me it's he works hard in practice but doesn't work on anything specific other than fitness, like, how he's running the race or plan for it much. dial back the effort a smidge and work on hitting intervals you can actually repeat. a pace you can keep. then run to that feel or with guys you know run that pace. you then have something other than panic or over-relaxation polarizations in your brain when the race happens.

to me part of this is when you go through practice but it's not explained "why" you are doing things.

You mean...like...the Track Coach?

Yes, until it’s no longer beneficial

Giving up is actually brave because your having the courage to face the inevitable scorn. Fax

I agree with some folks on here that perhaps you are flat in races because you have run too hard in practice.

However, almost every race starts out too fast for most of the people in it in lower levels of competition. Meaning that the 4:15 HS miler takes the 4:40 guy out too fast. The 4:40 guy goes into Oxygen debt and never does recover to get to an appropriate physiological state (the zone) to run his best. He ends up scratching his head when he runs his last lap in 75...hits a 4:52 and then blames himself for "not being tough enough".