Plan Ahead For Race Day
June 15, 2009
I'm going to do a short series of tips on racing. Why? Because I ran a race few weeks ago and I made several important mistakes. While I should "know better," I goofed and raced slower than my capabilities. So, here we go...first tip.
PLAN AHEAD
The morning of a recent 5k race I made all of the classic mistakes. I got up a touch later than I had planned. I hadn't packed so it took a while to find my shoes, make a bottle of water and a bottle of electrolyte drink. I got in the car and started to drive the 20 minutes I thought I would take to get to the race course. The drive took 30 instead, and as I arrived I realized that the 5k race was to go off in 23 minutes. That would be plenty of time for my warm-up routine, but I had not registered for the race. Plus, the reason I was running was to support a local track program and I needed to say hello to the coach, Oscar Ponce, a great friend and a former CU teammate. And this is when I started to stress...and stressing on race day, especially when it results in increased cortisol production, is not ideal. Cortisol, like most hormones, has a variety of effects on the human body, but it's safe to say that you don't want more of it prior to a race as it adversely effects performance. Now, did running late prevent me from racing well? Not completely, but there was no reason to start the stressed.
And just think...all I had to do was get up a little earlier, pack my gear the night before and plan ahead.
Coach Jay coaches athletes at RunnersCoach.com and blogs at CoachJayJohnson.com. And don't forget, if you have training question for Coach Jay, ask it here: coachjay@nike.com.
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