What You Should Do Before a Race?

Following are two training schedules, one for building up to a 5K and one for building up to an 8K or 10K. Here’s the fine print on these schedules:

• They assume that you can manage the first week’s training. If you’re not at that level yet, build your mileage until you are.
• I’ve only listed the key workouts for each week. Try to get in at least one on two other easy runs at your usual distance during the week.
• Don’t run so much or so hard the rest of the week that you can’t complete the listed workouts. They are the ones that will spur your improvement.
• Space the key workouts evenly throughout each week to allow proper recovery.
• Try not to miss any of the key workouts, but don’t try to “make up” missed ones. Just keep going through the schedule.
• If you miss the key workouts two weeks in a row, postpone your goal race by two weeks, and pick up the schedule where you left off.
• Do the striders at the end of an easy run. Try not to do them the day after the speed workouts or the long runs.
• The speed workouts are in terms of meters. If you don’t want to run speed work on the track, translate miles to minutes, and do the workouts on the road or trail.
• The schedules include races before your goal race. Enter these to get used to what racing feels like.
• Don’t run to exhaustion within five days of your goal race.

The speed workouts are in runner shorthand, specifying the number, distance, and pace for the workout. For example, 4 800 meters at 5K goal pace means to do four intervals of 800 meters each at your per mile goal pace for 5K, with the proper recovery between the intervals. Remember, a standard outdoor track is 400 meters around, so 800 meters equals two laps. Also, keep in mind that a 8K/10K goal pace is 10–15 seconds per mile slower than a 5K race pace. Finally, before starting these training schedules, your minimum weekly mileage should be 15 miles for the 5K and 25 miles for the 8K or 10K.

The Proper Pace Prescription

I’ve convinced you that you’ll run faster in 5Ks to 10Ks by doing a weekly speed workout at your VO2 max pace, and I’ve convinced you that you’ll improve more if you do them at this pace instead of as fast as you possibly can. Now you have just one question: How do you know what that pace is?
If you’ve run a 5K race at a solid effort within the last few months and have been running consistently since, use that pace as your current VO2 max pace. Better yet, hop in a 5K race soon, run hard the entire way, and figure out your average pace per mile. In both cases, make your 5K goal pace (what, you hope, will become your new VO2 max pace) about 15 seconds per mile faster. If you haven’t run a 5K in a while (or ever), you can still figure out the proper pace. If you’re running at least 15 miles per week and know your average training pace, subtract one minute per mile to get a reasonable 5K goal pace.
The 5K and 10K training schedules later in this chapter include speed workouts that are based on your 5K goal pace. The intervals in the 8K/10K schedule are a little longer and a little slower to better meet the demands of the longer races. If you’re decently trained, you should be able to run an 8K or 10K within 10 to 15 seconds per mile of your 5K race pace.
These workouts will help you to know what pace to try to reach in your race. You’ll be used to running hard while tired. After awhile, the pace will become second nature. That’s not to say that it will feel easy, but that you can launch into it and be confident that you’re at your goal pace until you get your first split time.
You should try to run as even a pace as you can in races of 5K to 10K. Many runners like to blast through the first mile much faster than their goal pace. This is a bad idea. Their reason behind doing this is to build a cushion to allow for when they slow later in the race, and their strategy becomes self-fulfilling. They have to slow in the second half of the race because they’ve gone into oxygen debt. Oxygen debt doesn’t demonstrate how mentally tough they are; it is an unforgiving physiological fact of life. As a result, their overall time is slower than if they had run at an even pace.
In races of 5K to 10K, when you’re working right at your VO2 max, you have a very small margin of error. If you run more than 10 seconds per mile faster than your VO2 max pace, then you’re running at a pace that you can sustain for at most two miles, usually much less. Trouble is, you still have at least a mile to go. So you’re going to have to slow way down, and you’re really going to hurt. It’s not uncommon for runners to have to slow by more than 30 seconds per mile in the last mile of a 5K when they’ve started too quickly.
In these short races, I sometimes start out a little bit more slowly than my goal pace. I give myself the first few minutes of the race to build gradually. For the first few minutes, I might be running at 5 to 10 seconds per mile slower than my goal pace. This slower start helps my heart and muscles better adapt to the sudden shock of running so quickly. Then, when all systems are firing, I can take off. Running an even pace is physically the most efficient way to race, but trying to run negative splits provides a tremendous psychological boost. You’re passing other runners pretty much the whole way. If you’ve ever run a race and been passed by someone in the last mile, you know how disconcerting it can be. You’re trying as hard as you can, and this runner is just blowing by you. There’s nothing you can do. When I run negative splits, I like to key on a runner about 100 yards ahead of me. I’ll focus on chasing him down and pulling him in gradually, and then I pass him quickly to demoralize him and move on to my next target. Running at an even pace or at negative splits leaves you better prepared for your kick.
How good a kick you’ll have at the end of a 5K, 8K, or 10K depends a lot on how intelligently you ran the race. If you haven’t gone out too quickly, then you’ll still be running aerobically. This means that you can start your kick from farther out than if you’ve gone into oxygen debt. If you have good natural speed, you can shave several seconds from your finishing time with a good, long kick.
Your body can run anaerobically for about 300 yards, so that’s the farthest away from the finish line that you should launch your sprint. If you’ve started the race too fast and have slowed during the second half of the race, you’re going to have a tough time kicking for more than 50 to 100 yards.

Understanding Aerobic Capacity

The key to training to become faster at 5Ks, 8Ks, and 10Ks is to improve your aerobic capacity, or VO2 max. That’s because you run these races at very close to your aerobic capacity—an all-out 5K is run at about 95 percent of your VO2 max, a 10K at about 92 percent. To run those races better, then, you need to max out your VO2 max. The best way to do that is to do one workout each week in which you run intervals at a pace that’s roughly at your VO2 max.
But wait a minute. Didn’t I tell you early on in this book that steady, comfortable running increases your VO2 max and that it will increase by 20 to 30 percent within a year of running? Why would you need to do anything more to race a good 5K? Early on, you don’t. You’re getting fitter by leaps and bounds just by running easy. But after those initial gains, you have to work harder to keep improving. It’s like learning a new computer program—you make the greatest improvements in the beginning, when you go from complete unfamiliarity to a basic working knowledge. It’s only after more extensive experience that you learn all those little tricks of the program that allow you to make that small but significant leap from a basic user to the one in the office who every one asks for advice.
In the training schedules at the end of this chapter, I’ll have you do one speed workout each week that will focus on boosting your VO2 max by having you run your intervals at roughly that pace. In your case, I’m making them a bit faster, because I’m assuming you haven’t done systematic speed work before, so you have more room for improvement than a long-time runner. It’s important to run them as close as possible to that pace to get the greatest improvement.
In these workouts, harder isn’t necessarily better. Most runners think that if they can run a workout of three interval miles in 8:00, then running them in 7:40 will be that much more of an effective workout. But it doesn’t always work that way. In these workouts, the important thing is to work right at the limits of your VO2 max. But that’s not the same as your max.
Remember, you run 5Ks very close to your VO2 max. But obviously you can run shorter races faster; you can maintain a quicker pace for 1 mile than you can for 3.1 miles. In races shorter than 5K, a bigger percentage of your energy is supplied anaerobically, independent of the oxygen that you breathe in. So it’s possible to run faster than your VO2 max for a short distance, stop running until you catch your breath, and then run anaerobically again. Unfortunately, many ambitious runners do their speed workouts this way. They run each interval as hard as they can. When they do that, they’re definitely training hard, but they’re not training very effectively. By training faster than their VO2 max pace, their workouts are more anaerobic, so they’re training their anaerobic systems. But then they go and race 5Ks, 8Ks, and 10Ks, which rely almost entirely on their aerobic systems. In their races, they’ll often not perform up to their expectations. They’ll think, “Gee, I ran three mile intervals the other night in 7:00 each, but I could only average 7:20s in the race.” To make matters worse, they’ll then often think that this means that should train that much harder, and the next week they’ll push themselves to run their mile intervals in 6:50.
See how they’re making their workouts less and less effective the farther that they stray from doing them at their VO2 max pace? Don’t let it happen to you. Train at the right intensity, and you can pass them in the races, leaving them to wonder why you’re behind them in speed workouts, but ahead of them in races.