24. Make Worry a Strategic Ultra Advantage: Race Strategy
Ever had worries about your next ultra derail your race prep and ruin race day? The standard advice is to not worry and think positively, but that doesn't make the worry disappear… it often makes you worry even more.
It’s normal to have legitimate concerns that something could go wrong. But these worries don’t need to stop you giving 100% every time you run an ultra.
Instead of telling you to just worry less, I’m introducing you this week to a counterintuitive approach called strategic pessimism. Tune in to discover the secret to turning your race-day anxiety into productive preparation, leaving you ready to handle anything your next race throws at you.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How strategic pessimism turns your natural protective instincts into a competitive advantage.
The exact way to transform worry from anxious spinning to calm readiness.
Why planning for problems reduces cognitive load and improves decision-making mid-race.
What changes in your performance level when problems become planned scenarios instead of emergencies.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Worry is good as long as you know how to use it. In this episode, I'm going to show you the surprising way to turn what you wish would stop, worry, into a strategic advantage.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 24. The common advice when you're worried about something going wrong is, don't worry about it. Think positive, they say. Don't focus on what could go wrong. I help my clients shift their thinking in exactly that direction from negative to positive, from problems to possibilities, but sometimes, I do what looks like the complete opposite.
Here's an example. I had a fantastic, talented client who was worried his stomach would go south during his peak race. And his fear wasn't unfounded. He had a history of gut issues that had derailed previous races in various ways. So instead of telling him not to worry about it or hoping it wouldn't happen, we did something different. We planned for it.
You know that pattern well, worrying about everything that can go wrong. What if this, what if that? And the more you worry, the more likely it seems to happen. The more we worry, the more likely it seems to happen, the more we amp up the fear of what we're sure is going to happen, until the fear and worry are overwhelming and we just want out.
Take missing cutoff, something most every ultra runner has worried about at some time. What if I miss cutoff becomes, I might miss cutoff. And then, I don't know that I can make cutoff. And then, I'm going to miss cutoff. And then, I don't want to run because I know I'm just going to miss cutoff. And the spiral keeps going. Each what-if feeds the next one. So the worry just grows bigger and scarier. What started as a legitimate concern becomes a monster that convinces us we're doomed even before we start the race.
The standard advice is, don't worry. So we try not to, which makes us worry even more. We try to think positive, but that doesn't make the worry disappear. Or we try and distract ourselves from thinking about it, but our minds keep circling back to it. The problem with this approach is that you're still vulnerable. The thing you're worried about is still a real possibility. You still see it as something to worry about because you haven't actually dealt with the underlying concern. It's like trying not to think about a pink elephant. Inevitably, you become so overwhelmed and freaked out by the stress that you just stop caring about the race, or you quit trying, or you drop out just to make the pressure of that worry stop. You quit in some way.
And here's what I know after years of coaching people through their fears and watching my own patterns, is what's really holding you back here is that you never answer the what-ifs. The reason your brain keeps bringing up the same scary scenarios is because you haven't given it a satisfactory response. It's like a persistent child asking, but what would happen if? And you keep saying, don't think about it. And the child, your brain, just gets more insistent. It gets louder. It still wants that question answered.
So the solution is to take a counterintuitive approach called strategic pessimism. Answer the what-ifs. Prepare for the worst outcome to work towards the best outcome. Instead of trying not to think about everything that can go wrong, what we're going to do here is go in the opposite direction. We're going to dive in and intentionally think of everything that can go wrong. And then, we're going to plan for it.
Why this works is that your worry isn't going anywhere. But we can transform it from a paralyzing anxiety into productive preparation. Think of it like this, your brain is trying to keep you safe by identifying threats, which is a good thing. So instead of telling it to shut up, what we're going to say is, good job, brain. Now, let's figure out what we'll do about each of these threats, and then plan for them.
So, let's go back to my client with the stomach issues. He'd been through the stomach issues before. Gut problems had affected his races and forced him to drop or had somehow negatively affected his races so he didn't run as well as he wanted to in the past. And with his peak race coming up, instead of pretending that wouldn't happen again, I coached him to own the worry, to expect it. He accepted that my stomach's probably going to go south again, and this time, when it does, I'm going to know exactly what to do about it.
So we started making a plan. He knew that one specific type of ramen noodle was magic for his stomach. But aid stations don't exactly stock our personal preferences food-wise, and cooking it on his own wouldn't work or really be safe in the middle of a race. So we figured out how to cook his ramen using hot water from aid stations. Race day came, his stomach started acting up about a third of the way in, sure enough, and he executed the plan and finished strong.
Let me break it down and show you exactly how this worked with my client's stomach problem. First, he accepted the worry. Now, this might feel like something you don't want to do. You don't want to think about your fears. You don't want to think about your worries. But you can't defeat them if you won't face them. Here's how this looked with my client. Instead of thinking, I hope my stomach doesn't act up this time, he said, my stomach has acted up before and it might again. So I'm going to plan for it.
Then, we got specific about what the problem actually was. We took the worry and broke it down into specific scenarios. Like, what exactly would this problem look like? When might it happen? What would be the first signs? And what was the actual problem here? So we broke down what stomach going south actually meant. And what it meant was nausea that makes it hard to keep fuel down, not getting enough fuel, which slowed his pace, and the psychological hit of, here we go again. It wasn't that he couldn't go on in the race. It was the nausea that was the problem. So we needed to solve the nausea.
So now that we have the problem, what we did next was brainstorm ways to solve it. So we imagined all the ways that we could solve it, crazy or not. We thought of as many solutions as we could and we didn't rule anything out. And we did this together and so we started along the track that you might where he can try and prevent the nausea. But he's tried a lot of things, and still, it can happen. So what if it did happen in this race anyway? At one point as we were talking it through, he said kind of offhand that he wished he could have this one specific type of ramen noodle that seemed to be magic for his stomach. It settled everything and got him back on track. And that was a solution.
So next, we looked at how we could make that happen in a race. It seemed crazy at first, but that didn't mean it wouldn't work. We couldn't count on the aid station having his ramen noodles, of course, because aid stations don't stock your own personal miracle foods. And stopping to actually cook ramen mid-race when he's tired and fatigued wasn't practical or safe either. And we talked through all those possibilities of how to do it. And we got creative.
This was a loop race. So, what if he had the dry ramen in his drop bag and cooked it with hot water from the aid stations? We checked on the website and the main aid station was offering hot soup and coffee, so we bargained that he'd have hot water. And we actually checked with the RD and the RD said yes, they would have hot water. So, game on. All that's left then is to execute with confidence. And on race day, it worked like a charm. His stomach started acting up and as he predicted, instead of panicking, he knew, time for plan B. He got to the aid station, asked for hot water, and made his ramen, problem solved, and he finished the race strong.
What happens when you do this process is that the moment you have a plan, something fundamental changes in your brain. That nagging worry voice gets quieter because it finally has an answer. Your brain was asking, but what if my stomach goes south? And instead of saying to it, don't think about that, you can now say, I've got my ramen noodles in my bag and I know exactly how to make it work. The worry doesn't disappear completely, but it transforms from anxious spinning to calm readiness.
Here's what changes in your race when you use strategic pessimism. Problems used to feel like emergencies. Your brain had to generate solutions under pressure when you were tired, stressed, fatigued, and dealing in the race with the immediate crisis. But now when you use strategic pessimism to plan for these things, problems feel like scenarios that you've planned for. Your brace shifts from, oh no, what do I do? to, time to execute plan B. You think better. It reduces your cognitive load that your brain is handling. Your brain stops burning mental energy in worry spirals because it has satisfactory answers. That energy then becomes available to concentrate on the race. It becomes available for your performance. You make better decisions.
You've already done the hard thinking of planning for these scenarios when you were calm and clearheaded and not in the middle of a crisis. So you feel more confident. When you're prepared for something that used to scare you, your overall confidence grows and you run better. It seems counterintuitive, but planning for problems actually makes you perform better, not worse. When you're not afraid of potential setbacks, you can take appropriate risks. You can push yourself harder because you know you can handle whatever comes up. My client with the stomach issues, he ran more aggressively in the race because he wasn't holding back out of fear. He knew that if his stomach acted up, he had a solution.
And it also ups your resilience. Setbacks stop feeling like disasters that you can't recover from and start feeling like, time for plan B. Instead of, why is this happening to me? it becomes, okay, this is the scenario I prepared for. Let me just execute that plan. It completely changes your relationship with challenge and uncertainty. You stop seeing problems as things that will derail you and start seeing them as scenarios to prepare for.
So, here's your challenge. Pick one thing you're already worried about, maybe it's an upcoming race or something at work or a difficult conversation, anything, and apply strategic pessimism.
Write down specifically what you're worried might happen. Brainstorm ways to solve it, crazy or not, everything is game. Engineer the most practical solution. See how all those brainstorm ideas could actually work. Gather any new resources that you need to execute the plan, like my client who had his ramen noodles, and notice how this changes how you feel about the challenge. Start seeing your tendency to worry as a valuable early warning system rather than a character flaw. You're not a worrier and you're not weak, you're strategically prepared.
So, your worry isn't going anywhere. Why not use it? Why not put it to work? Strategic pessimism turns your natural protective instincts into a competitive advantage. This is a powerful way to make your brain work for you instead of against you. Your brain comes up with the worries, you come up with the fixes. Instead of fighting your brain's tendency to identify problems, you partner with it to create solutions. And together, you walk into the race confident and prepared.
All right, y'all. That's this week's episode. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 24. The common advice when you're worried about something going wrong is, don't worry about it. Think positive, they say. Don't focus on what could go wrong. I help my clients shift their thinking in exactly that direction from negative to positive, from problems to possibilities, but sometimes, I do what looks like the complete opposite.
Here's an example. I had a fantastic, talented client who was worried his stomach would go south during his peak race. And his fear wasn't unfounded. He had a history of gut issues that had derailed previous races in various ways. So instead of telling him not to worry about it or hoping it wouldn't happen, we did something different. We planned for it.
You know that pattern well, worrying about everything that can go wrong. What if this, what if that? And the more you worry, the more likely it seems to happen. The more we worry, the more likely it seems to happen, the more we amp up the fear of what we're sure is going to happen, until the fear and worry are overwhelming and we just want out.
Take missing cutoff, something most every ultra runner has worried about at some time. What if I miss cutoff becomes, I might miss cutoff. And then, I don't know that I can make cutoff. And then, I'm going to miss cutoff. And then, I don't want to run because I know I'm just going to miss cutoff. And the spiral keeps going. Each what-if feeds the next one. So the worry just grows bigger and scarier. What started as a legitimate concern becomes a monster that convinces us we're doomed even before we start the race.
The standard advice is, don't worry. So we try not to, which makes us worry even more. We try to think positive, but that doesn't make the worry disappear. Or we try and distract ourselves from thinking about it, but our minds keep circling back to it. The problem with this approach is that you're still vulnerable. The thing you're worried about is still a real possibility. You still see it as something to worry about because you haven't actually dealt with the underlying concern. It's like trying not to think about a pink elephant. Inevitably, you become so overwhelmed and freaked out by the stress that you just stop caring about the race, or you quit trying, or you drop out just to make the pressure of that worry stop. You quit in some way.
And here's what I know after years of coaching people through their fears and watching my own patterns, is what's really holding you back here is that you never answer the what-ifs. The reason your brain keeps bringing up the same scary scenarios is because you haven't given it a satisfactory response. It's like a persistent child asking, but what would happen if? And you keep saying, don't think about it. And the child, your brain, just gets more insistent. It gets louder. It still wants that question answered.
So the solution is to take a counterintuitive approach called strategic pessimism. Answer the what-ifs. Prepare for the worst outcome to work towards the best outcome. Instead of trying not to think about everything that can go wrong, what we're going to do here is go in the opposite direction. We're going to dive in and intentionally think of everything that can go wrong. And then, we're going to plan for it.
Why this works is that your worry isn't going anywhere. But we can transform it from a paralyzing anxiety into productive preparation. Think of it like this, your brain is trying to keep you safe by identifying threats, which is a good thing. So instead of telling it to shut up, what we're going to say is, good job, brain. Now, let's figure out what we'll do about each of these threats, and then plan for them.
So, let's go back to my client with the stomach issues. He'd been through the stomach issues before. Gut problems had affected his races and forced him to drop or had somehow negatively affected his races so he didn't run as well as he wanted to in the past. And with his peak race coming up, instead of pretending that wouldn't happen again, I coached him to own the worry, to expect it. He accepted that my stomach's probably going to go south again, and this time, when it does, I'm going to know exactly what to do about it.
So we started making a plan. He knew that one specific type of ramen noodle was magic for his stomach. But aid stations don't exactly stock our personal preferences food-wise, and cooking it on his own wouldn't work or really be safe in the middle of a race. So we figured out how to cook his ramen using hot water from aid stations. Race day came, his stomach started acting up about a third of the way in, sure enough, and he executed the plan and finished strong.
Let me break it down and show you exactly how this worked with my client's stomach problem. First, he accepted the worry. Now, this might feel like something you don't want to do. You don't want to think about your fears. You don't want to think about your worries. But you can't defeat them if you won't face them. Here's how this looked with my client. Instead of thinking, I hope my stomach doesn't act up this time, he said, my stomach has acted up before and it might again. So I'm going to plan for it.
Then, we got specific about what the problem actually was. We took the worry and broke it down into specific scenarios. Like, what exactly would this problem look like? When might it happen? What would be the first signs? And what was the actual problem here? So we broke down what stomach going south actually meant. And what it meant was nausea that makes it hard to keep fuel down, not getting enough fuel, which slowed his pace, and the psychological hit of, here we go again. It wasn't that he couldn't go on in the race. It was the nausea that was the problem. So we needed to solve the nausea.
So now that we have the problem, what we did next was brainstorm ways to solve it. So we imagined all the ways that we could solve it, crazy or not. We thought of as many solutions as we could and we didn't rule anything out. And we did this together and so we started along the track that you might where he can try and prevent the nausea. But he's tried a lot of things, and still, it can happen. So what if it did happen in this race anyway? At one point as we were talking it through, he said kind of offhand that he wished he could have this one specific type of ramen noodle that seemed to be magic for his stomach. It settled everything and got him back on track. And that was a solution.
So next, we looked at how we could make that happen in a race. It seemed crazy at first, but that didn't mean it wouldn't work. We couldn't count on the aid station having his ramen noodles, of course, because aid stations don't stock your own personal miracle foods. And stopping to actually cook ramen mid-race when he's tired and fatigued wasn't practical or safe either. And we talked through all those possibilities of how to do it. And we got creative.
This was a loop race. So, what if he had the dry ramen in his drop bag and cooked it with hot water from the aid stations? We checked on the website and the main aid station was offering hot soup and coffee, so we bargained that he'd have hot water. And we actually checked with the RD and the RD said yes, they would have hot water. So, game on. All that's left then is to execute with confidence. And on race day, it worked like a charm. His stomach started acting up and as he predicted, instead of panicking, he knew, time for plan B. He got to the aid station, asked for hot water, and made his ramen, problem solved, and he finished the race strong.
What happens when you do this process is that the moment you have a plan, something fundamental changes in your brain. That nagging worry voice gets quieter because it finally has an answer. Your brain was asking, but what if my stomach goes south? And instead of saying to it, don't think about that, you can now say, I've got my ramen noodles in my bag and I know exactly how to make it work. The worry doesn't disappear completely, but it transforms from anxious spinning to calm readiness.
Here's what changes in your race when you use strategic pessimism. Problems used to feel like emergencies. Your brain had to generate solutions under pressure when you were tired, stressed, fatigued, and dealing in the race with the immediate crisis. But now when you use strategic pessimism to plan for these things, problems feel like scenarios that you've planned for. Your brace shifts from, oh no, what do I do? to, time to execute plan B. You think better. It reduces your cognitive load that your brain is handling. Your brain stops burning mental energy in worry spirals because it has satisfactory answers. That energy then becomes available to concentrate on the race. It becomes available for your performance. You make better decisions.
You've already done the hard thinking of planning for these scenarios when you were calm and clearheaded and not in the middle of a crisis. So you feel more confident. When you're prepared for something that used to scare you, your overall confidence grows and you run better. It seems counterintuitive, but planning for problems actually makes you perform better, not worse. When you're not afraid of potential setbacks, you can take appropriate risks. You can push yourself harder because you know you can handle whatever comes up. My client with the stomach issues, he ran more aggressively in the race because he wasn't holding back out of fear. He knew that if his stomach acted up, he had a solution.
And it also ups your resilience. Setbacks stop feeling like disasters that you can't recover from and start feeling like, time for plan B. Instead of, why is this happening to me? it becomes, okay, this is the scenario I prepared for. Let me just execute that plan. It completely changes your relationship with challenge and uncertainty. You stop seeing problems as things that will derail you and start seeing them as scenarios to prepare for.
So, here's your challenge. Pick one thing you're already worried about, maybe it's an upcoming race or something at work or a difficult conversation, anything, and apply strategic pessimism.
Write down specifically what you're worried might happen. Brainstorm ways to solve it, crazy or not, everything is game. Engineer the most practical solution. See how all those brainstorm ideas could actually work. Gather any new resources that you need to execute the plan, like my client who had his ramen noodles, and notice how this changes how you feel about the challenge. Start seeing your tendency to worry as a valuable early warning system rather than a character flaw. You're not a worrier and you're not weak, you're strategically prepared.
So, your worry isn't going anywhere. Why not use it? Why not put it to work? Strategic pessimism turns your natural protective instincts into a competitive advantage. This is a powerful way to make your brain work for you instead of against you. Your brain comes up with the worries, you come up with the fixes. Instead of fighting your brain's tendency to identify problems, you partner with it to create solutions. And together, you walk into the race confident and prepared.
All right, y'all. That's this week's episode. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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