In his own words: John Hassett - Pre-race focus


I have to say that the last couple of weeks have been pretty good. The Festival of Champions meet was great, and I want to thank anyone who helped out with that amazing event.

My thought process I used for my prerace work up was to mentally go over in my mind the previous race I had run on that particular course focusing on what went well as well as things I needed to correct to perform better. For example for the Festival of Champions I knew I wanted to be out front at the end of the football field so as not to get bunched in with other runners, but to eventually throttle back from that burning pace once on the trail. For the rest of the race the mental self-talk was to not let myself mentally lose focus and slowing down too much. Physical conditioning is important, but with a strong mental focus I can stay focused on maintaining my pace.

As the end of the season comes closer, I have started very intense speed training as well as a lot of volume in preparation for states and beyond. For the next couple of races there is definitely going to be a lot of pacing for certain goal mile times. I really hope that the weather doesn't get to bad before the end of the season so a couple new PR's will be set. I can't wait to run at PVCs at Lynx Academy and sure hope that it will be a fast race.