Race Preparation

Part 1

One of the attractions of running is that it is possible to prepare properly for a race and be fairly certain of the outcome. Chance plays only a small role in running; what happens is predictable on the basis of the runner’s physical endowment, recent race history, and training history.
Therefore, to be successful – which means running to the limit of your particular ability within the constraints imposed by your environment, including work, study, family responsibilities, or all three – you must follow certain rules in both training and racing. These rules ensure that the time you spend in training is not wasted and that it produces your best possible result.

Here are 13 steps you should take when preparing for a race together with information on what to do after a race
Step 1: Run Progressively longer races:
Before attempting races of 10km or longer, start running some longer races three to nine months before your planned race. Doing so helps you become accustomed to the distractions that accompany long races.

Step 2: Acclimatise to Heat:
Another problem faced by many runners is that most of our training is done in the cooler times of the day, either in early morning or late evenings. The result is that most of us are not adequately acclimatised for exercise in the heat because we have not trained sufficiently in warm conditions. Therefore the wise runner will undergo a period of heat acclimatisation consisting of running in the heat for five to eight sessions leading up to a hot weather race.
Step 3: Taper Your Training:
It is important that you do not carry your hard training right up to race day. It is advocated that for at least 7 days before the race you cut your training by half.

Step 4: Decide Your pace and effort:
During the week before the race, you need to think about your race tactics. There are essentially three ways to run a race: According to your body, according to your heart rate monitor, or according to your watch. When running according to your body, you monitor effort; when running according to your heart rate monitor or stopwatch you monitor either heart rate or pace, or perhaps both.
For the first few races, it is best to run according to your body and allow the “governor” (this is your in built pace regulator) to take charge. Start every race very slowly at an effort that the “governor” will allow you to maintain for the entire distance. It is disastrous to start too fast in any race, but especially in your first longer race. The golden rule is that the effort for both halves of the race should be as close as possible.

Step 5: Eat Healthy foods:
Ensure that you eat a healthy diet with moderate to high carbohydrate for the last 48 hours before the race. Eating breakfast before the race and ingesting carbohydrate during it will ensure that your blood glucose concentration does not fall during the race, impairing performance.
A disconcerting experience for any runner is to have the race interrupted by an unscheduled pit stop. The emotion of the moment, combined with half an hour or more of hard running, will shake loose even the most resolute bowels. One way of avoiding a pit stop is to ensure the that the intestine is empty before the race. To do this, eat only refined, low bulk carbohydrates which leave little residue (white bread, sweets, rice, potatoes)

Step 6: Prepare mentally:
With regard to competition, the important features are to control your anxiety and arousal levels before the race and to run the race in your mind as often as possible before you attempt it in reality. It is also advisable to store creative energy by avoiding all demanding creative activities in the last few days before a race.

Store creative energy.
In the week before the race, runners wanting to run a good race should devote some time to mental preparation. The first priority is to store creative energy; running requires mental energy and if this energy has been exhausted in other pursuits, there will be insufficient remaining to run a good race. There are at least three ways in which runners can harness their creative energy before a race:

Reduce training loads.
More sleep.
Avoid any new creative activities at work (not always possible!)

Mentally rehearse.
Run the race in your mind. Set realistic goals and then divide the distance into manageable segments. Clearly these skills are not acquired overnight and take practice. Your task is to imagine yourself running each of these segments in turn, in the times that you have set yourself. A special priority is know where the hills are on the course, especially those in the last third of the race. The reason for this is simply that near the end of any race, you are so tired that an unexpected hill can be discouraging