Nervous tension

However, as with the bike racing, nerves disappear as soon as the flag drops. To distract myself over the first few miles I mull over the business of pre-event nerves, and why it is that I can get in as big a stew over a long but gentle run as over a 20-minute race in which hurting myself is not unlikely.

I think the key is fear of not performing well; of letting yourself down. The most nervous I’ve been before a race was at the Nurburgring 24 Hours in 2000 where I was sharing a Caterham (powered by a Honda Fireblade engine) with Steve Sutcliffe and Peter Haynes. You’re probably familiar with Sutcliffe but might not have heard of Haynes. Peter was with us at Autocar for a short time before he defected to public relations and now runs RM Sotheby’s European marketing operation. Before Autocar he’d been at Caterham in sales but also raced Sevens regularly.

Both Steve and I had done many laps of the Nordschleife but Peter had never seen the place. Within a couple of laps he’d gone a couple of seconds faster than Steve. I can’t remember their lap times (remember that at the 24 hours both the old and new circuit are combined so the lap is around 15 miles long) but they were very competitive. I went out after them and my best lap was 15 seconds slower. The trouble was, I had to drive out of my skin to do it with a commitment level that was hard enough to maintain for ten minutes let alone a one-hour stint.

Between practice and the start I became progressively more tweaked up until the hour before the off I was close to throwing up. Once in the car I relaxed, helped by the realisation that in a race with 200 cars lap times were very much down to how clear a run you got. Both Steve and Peter did some quite slow laps down to traffic and I did some quick ones because they were clear.

Certainly the hanging about waiting for the off is terrible for the nerves. At Brands Hatch a fellow rider, only a couple of places ahead of me, had a huge accident at the bottom of Paddock Hill Bend and was seriously hurt. The race was red flagged and there was a break of an hour while he was attended to. I’d missed hitting him by about two feet so was quite shaken up; it was ridiculously hot sitting around in leathers, and I was close to calling it a day because I was so on edge. Once we were back racing I calmed down and just  concentrated on catching the rider ahead and the one after him.

So I plodded around and finished the half marathon in 2hr 3min. I’d been hoping to crack the two-hour mark but in the end was just chuffed to finish. What came as a surprise was the massive buzz that came after crossing the finishing line. Running is not my thing but I felt the same rush of emotion I used to feel driving home in the van with a couple of trophies on the dashboard after a good weekend’s racing. And how I felt after that 24-hour race with Sutcliffe and Haynes having not let the side down by being horrifically slow. Or crashing.

It’s a shame that great racing driver and sports psychologist Sir John Whitmore is no longer with us. He was my go-to expert on all things to do with the mind and how to control it to maximise your performance. He’d have been fascinating on this subject. I suspect he would have said that it’s the pre-event butterflies that help you perform well or at least deliver your best. It’s also a subject I’m sure fellow Ti contributor Karun Chandhok will be able to comment upon. I can’t think of a more high pressure moment than sitting on an F1 grid waiting for the celebrities to bugger off and the racing to actually start.

I reckon Sir John would also say that experiencing the nerves, the pre-race tension, is all part of the drug. One of the reasons we can’t resist putting ourselves through the whole experience of competing.