The Race Rituals of GRP Run

We’ve all seen it: the NBA athletes with the intricate handshakes before the game and the tap-the-ground-shoulder-shoulder-wiggle-wiggle of the MLB player in the batter’s box. It’s the New Zealand All Black’s haka and Tiger Woods wearing red on Sundays. It’s sumo wrestlers throwing rice in the air and hockey players whacking their goalie’s pads before the puck drop. And with the track World Championships just wrapping up in Eugene, we saw it with the Jamaican womens’ wigs and the ultra-precise set-up of sprinters in their blocks. False start? They perform the whole thing over in exact detail. All these actions are what we call rituals.

Steve Magness, a runner, performance coach, and author, writes: “In stressful, uncertain environments, rituals help us establish order in the outside world in order to gain control in the internal.” He expands on this concept in his book, Do Hard Things, saying, “According to the theory of compensatory control, we try to establish order in the outside world in order to gain control in the internal. When we utilize rituals, we shift our focus to behaviors that we are in charge of, pushing to the back of our mind the items which we have little control over.” He suggests that creating rituals can thus help with avoiding negative emotions. 

Interested in how rituals play a role for our own athletes on race-day, we reached out to the athletes on GRP Run to see if they had developed some of their own. But before we get into it, an interesting question arose: what differentiates a ritual from a routine? Or even just a quirky habit? While the concept of a ritual has some sort of religious or superstitious connotation to it, or at least is extraneous to the specific physical actions that the sport entails, the idea of routine seems more grounded in “normal” preparations.

But where is the line drawn between ritual and routine? They both seem to shift an athlete’s focus toward what they can control. While we don’t have a definitive answer perhaps looking at our athlete’s examples could shed some light on the question. And it’s kind of just fun to see what they said. So here we go:

“I have two things that I do before every race. One, is I write the words ‘you do you’ on my hand in permanent marker, to remind myself to do just that. That the race I want to run is mine and mine alone, and I don't have to speed up or slow down or do whatever anyone else is doing because that's not what helped me to get to where I am. The second thing I do is what my husband and I call a "sumo stomp", which is literally just how it sounds (imagine sumo wrestlers). We do it before every race and it seems silly, but it's our unspoken way of saying, ‘go crush it’ instead of saying ‘good luck’.” - Kat Morrissey

“Not a ‘ritual’ in the superstitious sense, but one thing I tend to do for evening races is to do a ‘shakeout’ run 5-6 hours before my event is scheduled to go off. Usually 2 miles of very easy running just to shake the cobwebs off so my legs feel good later. Then, afterwards, if I have time, I like to nap for about 30 minutes.” - Andrew Tario

“If I’m honest, I really don’t have any pre-race rituals. I usually have to work a full day before I race so that helps keep my mind off things. [But] to keep the race day anxiety at bay, I typically try to think about the race as little as possible. I keep myself distracted by going for a short shakeout run/walk the morning of the race, catching up on work and/or binge watching a show on Netflix. I race best when I’m feeling relaxed and confident— for me that means keeping my mind busy and staying in a calm headspace (usually by re-watching hours of Seinfeld or Law & Order reruns).” - Jess Scheriff

“Here are some of my rituals: Painting toenails for an ultramarathon. It celebrates a part of my body that I love, and makes me feel brave; eating at least 1/2 a banana before an ultra. It may be in my head, but I think it makes my stomach just a wee bit more settled; sitting and doing a few minutes of deep breathing before the race.” - Ben Feinson

“You could say my ritual is under-planning and getting adrenaline going by not being sure if I'll make the start line.” - Canyon Woodward

“Ritual - I eat a piece of chocolate with breakfast in the morning before a race. I feel like it helps wake me up, especially since I am not a big coffee drinker. Routine - before I leave for a race, I write out my schedule for the night before the race up to the start of the race. This includes when/where/what I am eating, when I want to go to sleep, when I need to get to the start line, etc. Writing out a schedule helps reduce decision fatigue leading into the race and keeps my mind relaxed.” - Katie Kellner

“Within 15 minutes before the race (usually after I put on my spikes and am about to head to the line, basically as close as I can get to before the gun goes off), I have a friend/teammate play some kind of Latin hip-hop (go-to is Waka-Waka by Shakira or Fireball by Pitbull). I dance like a crazy animal for like a minute. This is just to help me relax (both physically and mentally) and remind myself that racing is FUN.

“I [also] always wear one of my ‘racing scrunchies.’ I NEVER wear them on any other run or casually. It kind of symbolizes the race as a “special” event – something I don’t get to do every day and something to be THANKFUL that I GET to do it. It also reminds me of all the great memories I had with my [UConn] team, and all the good (and bad) races I’ve run with those scrunchies. It serves as a reminder to carry the memories and lessons from those races into every new race.” - Ericka Randazzo

These rituals are varied - serious, fun, meaningful, silly. But they all help the GRP Runners achieve their best high performance mindset before a big race.