I’m terrified of my own sport. Every starting line, every meet, every registration, and every training session involving the sprint hurdles fills me with anxiety. Just thinking about hurdling fills me with a strange cocktail of dread, anxiousness, and…excitement.
The way I know that I have to hurdle is that I have never stopped thinking about it, even when I thought the sport was over for me in high school, and even when I struggled to sprint respectably fast as a post-collegiate, and even now as I grapple with an established career while fitting in training. And the way I know that I have to be careful with hurdling is this terror I experience as I prepare for it.
The challenge of deeply loving your sport, of identifying with it, and of having grand ambitions in it is that your ego gets intimately tied to every moment you’re in it. Your ego is the most dangerous liability and the most critical asset you have as an athlete. A few tools have helped me manage my own ego that may help you with yours.
How Your Ego Cripples You
Identifying yourself with your sport is dangerous. Doing so means your sense of self and your sense of worth are all wrapped up in your performance and your progression. There is no good enough in this situation. Even the notion of retiring, resting, or slowing down can cripple your emotional health.
Every unit of progress I make as a sprinter gets compared to my standards and my aspirations. I don’t believe there’s a single unit of possibility that I ever run under 13.00 in the 110 meter high hurdles, much less approach Aries Merritt’s unbelievable 12.80, yet those numbers are in my head as my own PRs march down. No amount of progress comes quickly enough to satisfy me.
This drives me to train more, even though my Achilles hurts in the morning. This drives me to watch one more slow motion video of a world championship final, even though I’m 45 minutes past bedtime.
My ego is so consumed with reminding me I haven’t achieved the pinnacle – and, somehow, that if I just work a little harder I’ll magically arrive there, like, yesterday – that there isn’t any perception of upward trend, positive progress, or victory in showing up.
This is the dangerous part of ego as an athlete. You never reach the bar you’ve set for yourself. You criticize your own performance while it happens, not even leaving enough space or having enough grace to wait to look objectively at your performance after the fact.
But without your ego, you wouldn’t be in the sport at all.
How Your Ego Bolsters You
Because your perception of yourself includes being a successful athlete, you commit to doing the unpleasant, unglamorous work necessary to become one. Unless you’re being forced to participate by outside forces, presumably you’re in your sport for the love of the game or the love of the community or both. But every possible environmental factor is begging to distract you from preparing to play.
Your ego is the reason you can turn pro. The sense that you belong on the field and that being on the field is a source of joy keeps you from taking a haphazard approach to preparation.
I massage my feet, foam roll, and stretch every night because I know that doing so keeps me available to train. I ultrasound my old injuries – I mean, I own an ultrasound tool at all, let’s be serious – because I know that doing so might be the 5% capacity I need to have another hurdle session this week rather than resting. I built PVC hurdles and have a playlist of ultra-slow-mo hurdle technique videos so there’s no excuse for wild Colorado weather to stop me from developing my skills.
This all comes from ego. I don’t watch TV and I don’t drink often and I don’t eat many desserts because my identity as a hurdler is stronger than my desire for leisure. Further, I don’t identify as just an athlete. I don’t just play track & field. I am a hurdler.
To be a hurdler comes with certain defining traits and I’m unreasonably proud of them. I’m both brave enough and fool enough to run full speed at barriers. I’m not the fastest, but I’m flexible and snappy and aggressive. I’m obsessed with technique and that’s okay. To be a hurdler is to be all these things and I’ve never been able to release these traits from the shrine in my heart to running hurdles.
This degree of identification is why I choose training over all the other options available for my free time. But this degree of identification is also why the hurdles are so frightening for me.
What Ego Fears Most
The end state of this sort of identification with my sport and with my event within the sport is that I’m afraid.
If it’s time to line up to race, despite how much satisfaction the feeling of running over hurdles gives me, I’m weighed down by fear. If I’m rehearsing good technique and quick rhythm in practice, despite how beautiful I find the act of hurdling to be, I’m distracted by perfectionism. If I’ve gone more than 5 days without going over hurdles, despite how essential recovery is to my longevity in this event, I’m crushed by anxiety that I’m losing form.
These feelings lead to dumb decisions. I’m a MASTER of dumb decisions!
So where’s this all coming from?
Ego. Ego is most afraid of being embarrassed. Ego hates the thought of striving yet falling short. Ego is a victim of its own expectations. My expectations.
Because I love the hurdles so much, I want to look and be as beautifully violent as the best in the sport. Because I want to be like the best, the emotional message is that I want to be the best. If I want to be the best, then my standard candle for every moment in the sport is doing what I think the best would do.
And since my thoughts about what the best in my sport would do are not based on any lived experience of my own, every individual bit of my expectation about being a hurdler is delusional.
This is what I actually work hardest at: selling myself reality and dismissing delusion.
Managing My Ego’s Fear
When I’ve gone more than 5 days without going over hurdles, I make a note about the impact of this rest on my immediate recovery and on my likely sustainable participation. I check my journals about times I got hurt from doing too much, about times my athletes thrived on low-volume programs, and about advice my coaching mentors have shared from their own experiences.
When I’m rehearsing good technique and quick rhythm in practice, I recite a mantra about staying present before each rep and focus on a single cue while moving. I use techniques I learned in therapy to emphasize the present. I use techniques I learned in meditation to feel the skill while imagining so I can feel it while moving.
When I line up to race, I celebrate the fact that I get to play, then I settle into my routines for the start. I remind myself that racing is just an interim exam on the way to my goals. I try to sense every part of my body, so I know this team of bones and tissues is on board to perform.
And when I talk about my hobbies, I make a point of never saying “I am a hurdler.” I tell folks who know track that I run hurdles. I tell folks who don’t know the sport that I play at track & field. I tell people that I dream of continuing to race in this sport into my 100s.
It’s a series of little actions that help divorce my identity from the thing I do. A series of little actions that help disconnect my ego from my hobby.
To imagine myself as one with what I love is a sort of dysfunctional dependency. To acknowledge that I love this thing but am not, necessarily, made up of this thing, is intentional emotional distance. That distance let’s me reflect on running track. That distance let’s me coach myself in the hurdles. And that distance makes the fear tolerable.
That distance is what leaves room for the excitement. Amid a cocktail of destructive, distracting, disquieting emotions when I think about running hurdles, excitement is the ultimate garnish.
I’m still terrified of my sport, even 20 years after I first tried it. I’m scared to fall short of my own expectations for it. The excitement of playing it and excitement at the prospect of being able to do it for decades to come is how I know I love it.
If you’re struggling with anxiety about your sport, as I have at intervals for two decades now, it’s probably time to reconnect with what you love about it.
That love is what keeps the ego at bay.