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Strategies For Your Best Race

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What to do the day before a half marathon? When do you run, what do you eat? What do you need to know race morning to finally hit that PR or simply finish your first half marathon?

Training is supposed to be the hard part and race day the celebration, at least that’s what we’re often told. But for many runners, race day is filled with nerves or they cross the finish line knowing they could have done better…but how?

Here are a few strategies for having your best half marathon.race strategy

Pre-Race Strategies

We’ll get to the actual race, but first let’s start with everything we’re doing in the 48 hours before the race. Because if you make a mistake here like eating fried catfish because you’re trying to please your future husband…let’s just say that you could end up seeing a lot of the Nashville Rock N Roll porta potties on the course.

1. Meal Planning

Don’t be like that 25 year old version of me who was starving by the time we found our hotel after the expo and just needed to eat, which lead to finding the only place nearby.

Granted we didn’t at the time have awesome tools like Yelp, but I could have done so much more to avoid the situation!

  • Research nearby restaurants for your dinner and consider something light and eat early.
  • Bring your pre-race breakfast with you or plan to swing by a grocery store to grab your bagel and nut butter.
  • Double check that you’ve packed all the race fuel that you have previously tested on your long runs, including electrolytes.
  • We LOVE grabbing groceries for the trip overall because it ensures both pre and post race stomachs remain happy and nutrition on point.

2. Start Line Planning

Have you ever had the dream where you’re fighting to get to the race, but everything is against you and by the time you arrive everyone has already started? Yeah, most of us have.

Which is why we want to spend a little time planning ahead, to help alleviate that fear and get a better night of sleep.start line tips

3. Finish Line Planning

It seems like at this point all you need to do is sit down and eat your free banana. But alas, I’ve spent many a race wandering around for 30 minutes attempting to find my well meaning spectators or friends, all the while getting colder and hungrier.

  • Checkout the finish area map and pick a spot to meet your friends and family. Help them understand that it might take a bit for you to get out to them.
  • Go ahead and check that bag at the start line with some body wipes and dry clothes to change at the finish line. It’ll ensure you can hang out and enjoy the atmosphere.
  • If you have a finicky stomach, then have some of your trusted food ready in that bag or have a plan to find some green juice and a meal.

Start Line Strategies

Now that race day has arrived, you first need to go through my post on managing your race day nerves. Get that under control and then it’s time to plot out how you’ll be spending that time milling about the start area.

Porta Potties

Just get in line. Don’t kid yourself, you’ll absolutely go and you might as well get through the line sooner rather than later. If you find yourself having that “do I need to pee or not?” feeling as the time ticks down, know that it’s most often nerves and once you start running your body has a mechanism to put that on the back burner!

So if you have time, line up again, but if not then don’t sweat it.funny race day signs

Don’t Skip the Warm Up

As you’re standing around with hundreds or thousands of other runners, it can be easy to get lost in the moment and just skip your warm up, but that’s a major no-no.

Your warm up is doubly important on race day! It’s telling your body that it’s time to go, to do what you’ve repeatedly trained it to do and to ensure that all your muscles are warm and ready to go the second you cross that line.

Go through the dynamic warm up and then spend just a few minutes jogging. The longer the race, the less running around you need to do prior to the race as you can allow your first mile to serve as a warm up.

Where to line up?

Of all the race day mistakes that I’ve made and learned from there is only one that I continue to make…lining up too far back. This comes down to trusting yourself and your pacing, while also not trusting any of the runners in front of you, ha!

Most often I’ll see a pacer that’s in line with my goal and line up somewhere in front of or behind them. But invariably, a lot of folks who are going to be walking or going much slower have gotten nervous and decided to start way too far forward. I get it, nerves are taking hold of everyone.marathon race start

But when you spend the first few miles weaving in and out of people, you add steps to your race and waste a lot of mental/physical energy. Try lining up just a bit farther forward than you think you should if you’re going for a PR.

When you’re new, make sure you really look for those pacers to help you decide if you’re too far forward. It’s also no fun to have people whipping around you non-stop for the first few miles, when you’re working hard!

Handling the first mile

It’s happening, your wave of runners is finally going from a weird run, trot, walk through the corrals and across the start line. This is when a bizarre sprint begins and people completely abandon their race goals to just fly.

Nope, not you.

You know that by holding back in that first mile, you’ll get to catch and pass those runners later in the race. You don’t want to skyrocket your HR immediately and burn through fuel, along with fatiguing your legs.

Feel like training always goes well, only to have things fall apart during the race?? Then you need to read these Race Strategies! #runchat #bibchat Click To Tweet

Race Strategies

Let’s talk about the smart choices you’re going to make with pacing and fuel to stay on track for the duration of the race.

Dialing In the Pace
The first thing you need to know is that more studies are showing that EVEN pacing, not aiming for a negative split is the best way to hit a PR. I think this is because you dial in to a pace and instead of needing to push harder when tired, you simply maintain it.

The goal is to keep it in control during the first mile and from there dial in to your goal race pace. This should feel like you’re pushing yourself, but not that you can’t maintain the pace for many miles to come.

As you hit the final 2-3 miles of the race, you can start to push the pace if you’re feeling good. Just remember that  3 miles is still a long ways to run, which means you need to keep your pace increase small and sustainable. PR bell

Pay Attention to Effort Levels
Finding our exact pace is really hard!! One of the best ways to do this is to stop worrying about your watch and start focusing on your effort levels.

  • The first few miles of the race should almost feel too easy
  • The middle set of miles should feel like a push, but not hard to maintain.
  • The final set of miles should feel like you’re pulling out all the mental tools to hold on, but without feeling like you’re on the verge of a complete break down!

Looking at your watch can often prevent you from hitting a new PR. You freak out about the pace, even if it feels sustainable and then you hold yourself back. One of the reasons I often prescribe workouts for the runners we coach as medium or hard effort, is to help them learn just this feeling!

Fueling the Right Way
The final piece to a quality run is learning to fuel from start to finish the right way for your body! This is a massive and detailed post that I’ve previously written, so head over there for all the tips and some stomach friendly fuel.

What’s been the biggest race strategy that’s helped you hit a goal?

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Posted by amanda Categories: Half Marathon, running coach

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Debbie says

    April 2, 2019 at 5:03 pm

    The biggest race strategy for me is to stick to my plan. I took some well meaning advice from my husband before a half. It was very humid and he said remember to take water at every water stop so I won’t get dehydrated. That messed with my mind. It was humid that day and the water was not evaporating off my skin. I carry my own nutrition and also taking in all that extra water. I ended up with a stomach ache, water sloshing and bonked big time at mile 10. It was a bummer. Hard lessons learned. I trained in the humidity so stick with my plan that I know works for me. (He did feel really bad and I gave him hugs for trying to take care of me)

  2. Allie says

    April 3, 2019 at 4:25 am

    So much great advice here – the problem is, it’s hard to actually follow though with it on race day – LOL!! I think it takes experience and many races of doing it wrong (like lining up too far back!) in order to get it right. Mental game is everything and knowing the logistics just takes that piece of the puzzle away, which is obviously smart. I love the simple way you laid out how the race should feel. You nailed it…now just try and execute it and not go too fast out of the gate!

  3. Laura Norris says

    April 3, 2019 at 5:30 am

    Great advice! I like how you broke down the effort levels of the race because like you said, pace can be tricky, and sometimes GPS is unreliable in big city or trail races. The meal planning is so important also… I almost always try to find a Whole foods or similar grocery near a race since I know I can get a simple meal of chicken and a baked potato there.

  4. Pippa @ Pip in Motion says

    April 4, 2019 at 10:04 am

    Thanks for this, it was really useful! Cannot wait to be back racing again. Loved the tips on running by effort, sometimes that’s the best indicator.

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FACT. If you’re doing the work, then CELEBRATE Y FACT. If you’re doing the work, then CELEBRATE YOUR PROGRESS.🔥
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Too often I see us qualify our achievements...”I know it’s no big deal for some of you, but I...”
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I’ve done that and it takes the WOHOO out of what we just did.
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🥳🥳Celebration is what will keep you going when it’s cold or hard or boring...because sometimes getting to the goal is just doing the work even if it’s not exciting (cough WARM UP, drills, foam rolling).
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👊FACT. We don’t all progress at the same rate.
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👊FACT. We don’t all need to look the same or run the same or even enjoy the same workouts.
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👊FACT. Many of the biggest wins of our workouts aren’t visible to others.
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👇👇👇👇
Dismounting my high horse 🐎— tell me one bit of progress you’ve made recently????
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#forwardisapace #runtothefinish #runningcoach #runchat
STRESS IS NECESSARY FOR GROWTH - The🔑 is enough STRESS IS NECESSARY FOR GROWTH - The🔑 is enough to improve, but not so much that you throw your body out of whack.
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Your body doesn’t understand the difference between the stress of a sprint workout or watching the news, so athletes have to really pay attention to TOTAL STRESS LEVELS.
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⏩SWIPE for the bell curve, we want to stay on the left side. But how do we do that?
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🚫Don’t train for a marathon in the middle of BIG LIFE stresses.
🚫Don’t skip rest and recovery days.
🚫Don’t do every run at the same pace (easy vs hard)
✅Do make the majority of your runs easy
✅Do fuel your body well and ENOUGH
✅Do follow a smart training plan
✅Do utilizes tools to destress (sleep, meditation, CBD, ashwaghanda)
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I’m probably more conscious of overloading on stress than many because I saw it wreck my health and I don’t want that for others!
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One way I have stayed on top of things over the last 5 years is @insidetracker testing.
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👍Tracking cortisol levels, which are a marker of stress. Mine have gotten back on track since moving to LHR training and yet, I’m still getting fitter.
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👊C-reactive Protein levels which are a marker of inflammation. (note you don’t want to do a hard workout the day before a blood test!)
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💪Testosterone levels also often drop when stress is too high, so another easy one to watch.
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Our goal in training is to find the appropriate volume of stress to create growth all the way up to the point where we are peaking for a race and then we REST AND RECOVER. If you just keep going, you’ll tip past the good stress into Chronic stress, swipe for the signs.
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Crazier to know we’ll add 1-2 more coaches this year🥳🥳 It thrills me to my core that we’re helping runners:
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In mobility we are working on the end range of motion.
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🤗As a runner that means ensuring your hips can fully extend through the push off and pull up the knee in front of you for a powerful stride.
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😢Lack of mobility can place strain on other muscles and joints and we all know we don’t want that.
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2 rounds of 10 reps per side (or just do them once and I’ll dance for joy!)
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1️⃣Elevated Twist - Put something soft below your bottom knee. You can also do this standing by putting your leg in a pigeon pose on the counter.
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3️⃣Angeled Bird Dog- After extending arm and leg, try bringing both to 90 degrees without dropping. You can definitely see where I’m working on that full opening of my hip.
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Let me know how this one goes!!
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