Pace Yourself at the Start of a Race
How fast do you run at the start of a race?
No matter how well you do everything else during a race, there are very few things that can affect how well you finish as how well you start.
Ask any runner and at one point or another, somebody has probably told you not to go out too fast during a race. And that’s good advice.
Starting a race too fast is very easy to do, because once that gun fires our flight or fight response goes into overdrive and if you’ve had a good warmup you just want to get moving. Add in the excitement, the preceding anticipation of the race, some cheering crowds and plenty of runners around you also going out too fast and you have a recipe for disaster.
In a short sprint, this is the best of all possible worlds, but once you get into any sort of distance you really need to resist the urge to run as fast and as hard as you can right off the bat.
We only have so much fuel stored in our muscles and liver that we can quickly turn into energy while we are running. If you run too fast at the start of a race, those stores will be gone before you know it.
You will start to labor way too early in the race, and you’ll find that no matter how much time you bank up front, you are going to lose even more time at the end of the race.
Watch how world records are run, and what the best elite athletes do in a race. You will almost always find that they run negative splits, which means that the second half of their race is faster than the first half. That means that they are going out easier than than they plan on running.
So how do you avoid going too fast at the start?
- Avoid all-out sprints as part of your warm up routine. If you do striders, they should be up-tempo but not as hard as you can go.
- Take a deep breath and relax during the starting instructions. Then take another one.
- Remind yourself over and over as the start nears that people are going to pass you in the first mile, and that that’s okay. Don’t let yourself get caught up in other people’s paces.
When I paced a friend through his first marathon in New York City, we went out in 7:45/mile pace and average 6:33/mile over the entire course. That wasn’t an accident. When things began to get tough for John as we got near the Bronx, I told him to look up at the 2000 people we were going to pass over the next 6 miles or so. I bet that my estimate wasn’t too far off the mark.
Even in short races a smart pace at the start can make a big difference in how you feel halfway through the race and how you feel at the finish.
Blaine Moore is a running coach in Southern Maine with 20 years of training and racing experience, which he shares on his blog at http://news.RunToWin.com – If you would like to get regular tips and training advice along with his his report, The 3 Components of an Effective Workout, then sign up for his newsletter at: http://www.RunToWin.com/newsletter.html