1. Breathe Calm and Carry On
Long before the Start Gun fires, consciously breathe yourself into your inner space...that space within you that you have learned to love from all your training.  It's that seductive, sweet soul of yours far apart from the iPod, the bills, the comings and goings. Go there, and then let nothing, nobody interfere.  In the treasured, privileged moments before the race; abide by the rules, smile often, practice kindness.  Once the gun goes off?  For the sake of positive karma,  adhere at least to the first.  Without honesty,  you're simply competing, not Awakening.  You've enhanced your Highest Self simply by doing what it took to get to the Start Line (be it kindergarten or the National Championships).  Don't blow it by being mean and unaware of the fact that you are - by all means - in a very sacred temple; the Temple of Holy Water...the Temple of Sweat.   So, when tension, anxiety, or frustration arises?  Breathe Calm, and Carry On.  

2. Know Your (Battle)Dance
Each year, about 12 million people toe Start Lines.  Each of them - make no mistake - is your tribal sister.  Your tribal brother.  At this dance, however, the Start Line is less crowded, for we are Awake enough to participate in a Sacred Path less traveled, a Path which common warriors seldom sweat.  Cherish that fact.  If you find yourself slowing down in this Dance?  Pull over to one side to let faster racers pass.  Unless, of course, you reckon waaaaay down deep inside of you that you can in fact, beat that person breathing down your neck.  If that's the case, make the mofo pass you in the powder, baby...with perhaps a little love-tap to their ribs with your elbow as they pass.  Hey, all is fair in love and war.  And (besides hockey) snowshoeing racing is about the greatest BattleDance I know. 

3. Trust The Arising Spirit
Sure, your heart rate is going soar to the blue moon within the first hundred meters of a snowshoe race.  Ilg suggests this;  Welcome the opportunity of difficulty.  When the ego is uncomfortable, the richest spiritual terrain arises.  As our lungs become our inner Medicine Drum beating, tap into the beating lungs and know that those lungs - your lungs - are the Universe breathing into you.  It's a race, so use it as a pilgrimage;  intensify the pain to increase the purification of everything within you that is not of love and trust.  

4. Learn to Leash Your Mind
The mind unanchored is like a disobedient dog running here and there without discipline.  Such a dog is likely to get hurt or forced to stay on a leash because he cannot be trusted.  Once trained, however, he can enjoy running as fast and as far as he wants because he is trusted to come back when called.  Same for the high performance human mind:  It must be disciplined through training (meditation) to come back when called.  Otherwise, energy - physical, mental, and emotional - is terribly wasted.  I use my Blessed Mantra to focus my mind and free myself to trust the arising spirit.  An unleashed mind not only time warps the passing of miles and pain, it does so by deepening spiritual capacity and merit.  I once raced part of a 10K next to a student of mine to whom I taught the Mantra.  It was deeply empowering;  two warriors racing through nordic woods chanting together,  breathing together...two men as brothers...two men as one surrendered spirit.  

5. Watch Your Step
This is a standard sign traditionally posted over the door into a Zendo (a Zen meditation hall).  On one level it literally means "Watch your step."  On a metaphysical level it coaches us to 'cultivate the witnessing self.'   When we are racing and the pain is so great our ego is a very powerful voice telling us to 'slow down' or 'back off.'   With the practice of 'watching our steps' we learn to transcend the chaos of the wildly erratic ego and random thoughts.  We instead reside calmly in that part of ourself that is just 'watching' the antics of the screaming ego.  We just 'watch' the pain arising without attachment to what we think 'should be.'   It's quite the breath-giving realization;  I am not this pain...I am not this anger arising...I am not this doubt...I am not this fear.  I am Pure Awareness.  I am the Watcher; beyond the ups and downs of the discursive mind. 

 6.  Balance Thy Brain Waves
There is a reason why aid stations are on both sides of popular race courses—so racers don't have to cut other racers off to get to them.  Similarly,  our brain has differently functioning left and right hemispheres so we don't have to cut off our yin from our yang...our female from our male...our fierceness from our receptivity.  Studies show that runners who ran through the same distance of wilderness as did hikers recalled far more and deeper intensities of recollections from along the route.  This surprises me little.  When we push ourselves deeper into our uncomfort-zones,  our Higher Capacities kick the frozen snot out of our common comfort mode and skyrocket us into Divine Mode, a mode filled with sacred joy, zen beauty, and poetic insight.  Mindfulness increases with intensity.  Few sports are more intense than snowshoe racing.  You do the math.  How else to explain the undeniably quixotic and sacred sensations from something as simple as running as fast as we can atop frozen water on anciently designed webs?  Doesn't make logical sense, does it?  Yet when you and I race across that exquisitely latticed winterscape, we pretty much commune with all that is go(o)d, don't we? 

7. Don't Forget To Suck
I don't just mean on your insulated feeder tube CamelBak, either.  I mean, suck your lower belly in.  Only in snowshoeing racing is your heart rate at your highest yet your average mile per hour speed at its slowest.  Due to the amplified knee lift, arm carry, and hip extension inherent to the biomechanics of snowshoe racing, intra- abdominal and intra-thoracic pressure are at their greatest as well.  This spells P-A-I-N for the unwise.  Sure, doing threshold intervals in the weeks before the snow flies is vital.  They help thwart physiologic collapse during snowshoe races.  Less likely known and perhaps more important is  help preventing (or at least delaying) postural collapse during snowshoe races.  During your next workout,  imagine a tiny little Wisdom Being in your spine at the level of your navel.  With each inhale,  this Wisdom Being lasso's your inhale and pulls it into the navel.  Where you are eventually traveling toward is a cardio version of what yogis know as "Uddiyana Bandha" - an internal seal which reverses downward flowing life force (prana) upward; a much more powerful sourcing of breath.  This form of breathing also creates a type of air-bag against which the lumbar spine benefits which helps release the gluteal and hip power while uplifting the entire thoracic cavity increasing lung tidal volume and other cardio-respiratory factors.

8. It's A Race, So Pass Somebody
What?  Did  I stutter or something?  On the physical level, this is simple.  Pass somebody, for crying out loud.  Metaphysically, this means to use the imponderable preciousness of a human incarnation and do your absolute best to win the 'real' race...the Human Race.  What I am attempting to tell you is that there is no podium higher than the podium of the Human Race (why do you think they call it a Human "Race" anyway?!) which is Enlightenment.  So wake up each day and pass somebody.  It's a race.  Game On.  Go.  Onward, upward, and endlessly inward, Noble Warrior!  Enlightenment is not for you.  It's for ALL of us.  Think here of Buddha,  of Yogi Jesus...we don't try to win races for ourselves.  We try to win races to help inspire others.  

9. No Whining
In my tradition of Wholistic Fitness®, we have a quote, "My workout is everywhere."  I cannot bring to mind a snowshoe race in which I have not been in searing neural pain due to a paralyzing spinal injury in 1982.  Instead of whining about the pain, I have learned to drink deeply from the well of Gratitude for just being able to move one foot in front of my other one again.  The doctors said I never would.  I tell you this not to thump myself on my own (broken) back in front of you,  rather to let you know that whining does not help.  Snowshoeing racing is the most demanding endurance sport I know...and I've come to know most of them.  In snowshoe racing there is no such thing as a glide, or a coast, or passive locomotive movement of any form.  Only in snowshoeing racing are downhills as exhausting as uphills.  Rhythm is not available;  only spontaneous adaptation to imposed demands.  Each moment on the webs is entirely new;  each web placed upon the shifting snows beneath require you to learn a new lesson,  receive yet another new Teacher.  More often than not the curriculum is intense and you'll want to ease off, take the sharp edge and dull it somehow.  How you consciously choose to take the course is up to your ability, temperament, and willingness to be honest with your highest self.  My only coaching counsel in this sport of sports?  No whining.  You'll learn more about your true self without it.  

10. Just Be
After all, we are only in competition with ourselves. It's not about winning—it's about finishing what you start.  Everyone is at different levels.  Not better or worse levels;  just different ones.  We each breathe the same cosmic - if frosted - breath.  Each of us has done what it took just to get to the Start Line.  That, my friend along the Path, is noble.  We share a sport so uncommon,  so rich with pristine, pure beauty that it boggles the mind.  So,  let's Just Be.  Let's just breathe.  Running on water makes all men brothers.  Running on water makes all women sisters.  Running on water makes us All One.