How to Think Like a Cross Country Runner

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Peter with Expert Village. Today I'm going to talk to you about competitive cross country running. In this section I'm going to talk to you about how to think and how to mark your course as a competitive cross country runner. For those of you that are new to this or even if you have been doing it for a while, a lot of times you might find yourself running a course and you might want to give up that first mile or first mile in a half cause it's either too sunny outside and your just sweating and you just want to stop. Well it's all a mental thing, so what you need to do is know in your head that you're going to complete the race no matter what the course may be and you also want to know the line marks as well. For example, this run as you can see there's quite a few trees and I go down further the course the bigger trees are going to mark off like my first mile mark. Knowing this helps me to proceed with the run as well as positively thinking that I don't care what it takes I'm just going to finish off the run and if I get a little tired instead of stopping why not just slow down a little bit. Take in those deep breathes and continue the run pick up the speed as I want to so that why I can finish. What you'll end up realizing is if you end up doing that then you'll come to the end of the course and you'll end up doing a lot better than what you expected it. So it's definitely a mental you have to be positive and just know your course as well."