As an athlete I have two the first is right at the start line I play two songs in my head that for some odd reason get me going. In the air tonight by Phil Collins and like the first 30 ish seconds of the circle of life from the lion king

And my team before a race we put our arms around eachother to form a circle and we get low and slowly start swaying to the left and right then we get higher and faster while chanting “Cheyenne”

The story behind Cheyenne is very funny about 3 yrs ago someone on our team liked a girl with that name who had a very large you know what and he got rejected by her right before his race but he went on to help us beat our rivals. So we think of it as chasing a girl with a huge butt making you want to go faster. Unfortunately one of our senior teammates who’s actually a sprinter but had to do one xc race if he wanted to train for track in the fall and he was talking shi about our chant so he nearly got his shi rocked by my friend

It’s safe to say the superstitions work though