Congratulations on qualifyiing! Your first year - that's pretty good! My best advice is this: let this day be the payoff for all your hard work and approach it as a learning experience for next year. Don't have any expectations about placing. Go soak it all in, enjoy, and go hard. The reality is that you will probably get your butt kicked by athletes just as talented as you are who have a decade of race experience. Next year, plan to have a great race at Nationals and, if you qualify for Worlds, make that the "payoff day".

Bottom line is that, since you qualified, you belong there and you will do just fine. Nationals and Worlds are just triathlons like any other, only there happen to be some really fast people there. Below is an article I wrote on psychological mode for racing which you may find helful. If you have a quick question, feel free to write me at Good luck, Ken

Manipulating Psychological Mode for Optimal Training and Racing
For Inside Triathlon
© 2003 by Joe Friel and Ken Mierke

I once coached an athlete through qualifying for the Navy SEALS. He was a serious triathlete, a regional champion, but his real goal was always the SEALS. After years of training for this goal, we sat down for a strategy session right before he left to take his big test. As we were leaving, I said to him, “Have fun.â€? He was furious with me. He had worked so hard to prepare for this test, and he thought that my telling him to have fun meant I thought that he wasn’t taking it seriously. Serious and fun are not opposites  in fact, they can and should go together. Learning to bring these together on race day will lead to peak performance.
Every athlete has had workouts and races during which producing and sustaining high heart rates was so challenging and exciting that the pain and effort almost went unnoticed. Other times, eight two-minute hill repeats can seem intolerable. Often, the difference between these two experiences is the mindset, or psychological mode, in which an athlete begins a workout or race. Few athletes understand what a powerful force this can be in training and racing. Even fewer realize that psychological mode is something that can and should be manipulated.
Every athlete has an optimal level of psychological arousal for peak performance. If psychological arousal is too low, the athlete will be under-motivated and won’t perform maximally. If arousal is too high, the athlete will suffer from anxiety, which can impair race performance. Instead of forcing yourself to gear down psychologically to avoid becoming too anxious before a race or workout, you can learn to activate a different part of your psyche that thrives on higher arousal, to maximize performance.

Achievement mode
Racing and very hard workouts tend to activate what we refer to as achievement mode. While in the achievement mode, athletes want to succeed: to climb faster, pass their rivals, win the race, set a new personal best. Unfortunately, this is not the ideal mode for racing or for hard workouts. When in the achievement mode, athletes find high arousal produces anxiety and low arousal produces feelings of peace. Of course, racing and hard workouts are extremely high arousal situations, both physically and psychologically. Maintaining high physical and emotional intensity while in this mode triggers frustration and increased perceptions of both exertion and pain, even while the athlete is performing well.
As exercise physiologists and coaches, we realize the importance of structure in training, goal setting, and using numbers to control an athlete’s training. We also realize that these numbers can take on a larger-than-life role in the athlete’s mind and become more detrimental than beneficial. We remember one cyclist we coached who set a 45-second personal record in a 40K time trial in his first podium appearance, but was infuriated because he could not hold the heart rate he had planned to. Annual training plans, heart rate zones, periodization, and all the structured, goal-oriented, number-oriented tools, which are useful for preparing an athlete for peak performance, are intrinsically related to the achievement mode. These things have their time and place, but on race day the preparation is done and it is time to shift modes and go race.

Hedonic mode
The second psychological mode is the hedonic (pleasure-seeking) mode. In this mode, athletes swim, bike, and run to the point of exhaustion simply for the joy of it brings. When in this mode, athletes find high arousal to produce feelings of challenge and excitement, while they find low arousal to be boring. This is the ideal state of mind for racing and high-intensity training, but it is not an attitude that comes naturally at these times. The pressure of performing well tends to shift serious athletes into the achievement mode at the times they most need the benefits of the hedonic mode. While we all enjoy racing and hard training, we also have goals. We train hard and race to make progress … to ACHIEVE. Success is not measured by pleasure, but by results. Learning to shift into the hedonic mode at appropriate times, even though it will not be natural at those times, is critical to producing your best performances when you need to.
The achievement mode is appropriate for workouts that demand discipline or must remain low intensity. Longer rides with strictly controlled low intensity demand the discipline and patience provided by this mode. An athlete in the hedonic mode would find these workouts endlessly boring. Ever attacked a hill during a long base phase workout that was supposed to be kept aerobic? We all have. This is the hedonic mode kicking in. Specific work on pedal-stroke technique and other important workouts that demand concentration, but require minimal intensity may also benefit from this mode. The low intensity and arousal are not stimulating to the athlete engaged in the hedonic mode.

Focus on Feelings, not on Numbers
While heart rate, wattage, and miles per hour can be critical in training, sometimes used almost exclusively to govern workout intensity, we prefer to have athletes rely more on perceived exertion during races. Heart rate and wattage can be useful gauges, but overemphasis on the numbers tends to shift athletes out of the ideal psychological mode for racing. We like to teach our athletes to become intimately acquainted with how their body feels at the intensity level which will be required in their racing and to seek to reproduce those feelings on race day. Using heart rate, wattage, and even laboratory test results improves training efficiency. During this training the athlete needs to remain tuned in to perceived exertion, even as he trains by numbers, to learn to accurately and consistently perceive intensity on race day. Prepare by the numbers; race by feel.

Enjoy the moment
Did you ever watch Michael Jordan score 50 points in a basketball game and see the huge smile on his face? Was he smiling because he scored 50 points or did he score 50 points because he was smiling? British psychologist Dr. Michael Apter’s research says the answer to both questions is yes. Great athletes in every sport are at their best under intense pressure. They fall into the hedonic mode instead of the achievement mode and the high arousal brings out their best. Great athletic performances are expressions of the joy of the sport. If you lose touch with that because of the will to achieve, your performance will suffer.

Don’t “Psyche Up�
We do not like the idea of our athletes getting “psyched up� for races. This method of increasing arousal shifts them into the achievement mode and generally does not produce great performances. Athletes who have trained hard and long for an event will naturally be aroused come race day. Artificially increasing this is neither necessary nor beneficial.
Race Day is “Payoff�
We like to remind athletes that they invest an enormous amount in preparing for races. They train hard and with discipline. They avoid late-night partying. They eat a healthy diet. We like to have our athletes perceive race day as the payoff, something to be looked forward to, not as the final exam to be dreaded. This kind of attitude shifts the athlete toward the hedonic mode, which brings out their best on race day. Many great performances have resulted from an athlete thinking that he has stored many hours of hard training in his legs and race day he just “lets it out�.
Understanding how, when, and why to shift to the appropriate psychological mode for different workouts and races enables an athlete to enjoy discipline and control when appropriate and to relish the challenge, effort, and pain associated with high-intensity workouts and races when that is required.
Suggested readings:
Apter, M.J. (1984) Reversal theory and personality: a review. Journal of Research in Personality, 18, 265-288
Csikszententmihalyi, M.(1990). Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Joe Friel is co-author of Going Long and the Triathlete’s Training Bible. Visit Ultrafit.com for more. Ken Mierke serves as director of training for Ultrafit and also coaches athletes through his own company, Fitness Concepts at Fitness-Concepts.com.

In summary
Every athlete has an optimal level of psychological arousal for peak performance. If psychological arousal is too low, the athlete is under-motivated and won’t perform maximally. If arousal is too high, the athlete will suffer from some degree of anxiety.

Chris -- again, congrats :) I study Shaolin Kempo.