September 17, 2019
How To Control Your Race
It’s not enough to get fit. To achieve your best result, you need to be fit and execute a flawless race. Here’s how you can in your next race.
This post was originally written for The Straits Times as part of a 16-week column preparing runners for The Straits Times Run 2019.
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Several years ago, I was coaching two experienced runners who were heading to the New York Marathon in the hopes of breaking their personal bests (PBs) and getting close to the magical three-hour mark.
A week or so before the race, we had them in the Coached Lab for pre-race testing. We do testing to measure fitness improvements, refine zones and calculate race strategy. Both guys were in a similar condition although the younger of the two (in his mid-40s) was slightly fitter, and I expected him to run one to two minutes faster than his friend.
Race day came and went, and the results surprised me. The younger gentleman clocked a finishing time of 3hr 18min while his older buddy ran much faster to finish in 3hr 00min flat.
Learn How To Race
After doing a post-race debrief with each athlete, looking at the race splits and dissecting a few other important areas of the race, it became clear that this difference in time had little to do with fitness and everything to do with how each athlete ran their race – their race execution.
Race execution is a crucial skill that every athlete must develop. It’s not enough to get fit; you have to develop the ability to express that fitness in a way that gives you the best result.
With only a few weeks left until The Straits Times Run, the benefits you are going to get in fitness are limited. Your attention should now be transitioning from getting fit to maximising that fitness (good or bad) on race day so that you achieve your best possible result.
Cut Race Times, Not Corners.
Racing at your potential and enjoying training is easy when you’re following the right programme.
Control The Controllables
On race day, there are things you can control, things you can’t and things you can influence. You can influence fellow participants and volunteers, but you can’t control them or the weather and several other things. You need to focus on the things within your control.
The four that are most important are pacing, fuelling, running form and mindset, so let’s end by discussing each of these.
Pacing
Your pacing is the most critical thing to get right on race day. It affects how quickly your muscles fatigue, along with how fast you dehydrate and burn fuel. Most runners use the wrong pacing strategy in a race. They either want to “bank time” in the early stages of the race or like most runners, unintentionally start too fast and blow up.
If you want to run at your best and maximise fitness, you need to run conservatively and run at an even pace throughout the entire race.
Fuelling
When you race, your body loses sweat and energy at a higher rate than it can replace it, so fuelling correctly is very important to having “gas in the tank” and maximising fitness.
Think of fuelling in two parts.
- Hydration.
- Energy.
When you run, especially in Singapore’s hot and humid climate, you lose sweat and with it, sodium (salt). To hydrate properly, you need to be drinking water to replace the volume of fluid you are losing and salt. Salt helps your body retain water and is essential to remaining well-hydrated and keeping your heart rate down.
Your muscles and liver store carbohydrates as glycogen. These stores are limited and need to be replaced as you run. For this, energy gels are the best strategy. Because gels are incredibly concentrated, you should practise using them in training to avoid unnecessary stomach problems on race day.
Running Form
When fatigue sets in, it’s common for your running technique to fall apart. Be mindful of this and review your form regularly. Is your chin up? Are you driving your arms without rocking your shoulders? Are you taking deep, relaxed breaths? Are you maintaining a nice, tall posture?
By being conscious of these things, you’ll delay the rate at which your form breaks down, and you’ll slow down less.
Mindset
Maintaining a positive frame of mind will not only help you run faster; it will make the entire race experience more pleasant. In my experience, mindset is linked with pacing. If you start too fast and blow up, your level of suffering will increase as people begin to pass you, pushing you into a negative frame of mind. To combat this, start conservatively and be the person passing everyone in the later stages. It gives you energy and fuels motivation right to the finish line.
As you can see, it is not enough to be fit. You must be fit and execute your race plan with great control to maximise fitness on race day and achieve your best result.
Ben Pulham