Tips for Hanging on In a Race?

As others have mentioned, shorten your race distance and lock on. You can hang w/any and all of them for 1200 and then see what's left to close. If you bonk, so what. You probably won't.

3 easy steps:

1. Expect the unexpected: fail/success

2. Don't think about how fast they are, think about how long you can hang onto them

3. Get ready to hurt, if you want to finish that race

Yes.... you are very consistent with your belief of what is and isn't with running. Yet it's not as black and white as you make it out to be.

Unfortunately you miss the point of the OPs question ... he's not trying to beat Hunt. He's trying to run faster and looking for a better mental approach.

Your anecdotal example is nice but if your theory is correct Thom would have beaten those guys you mention every time those guys raced which of course we know to be untrue. Just because Brian (or Bill), whomever you are saying was your all-american ,couldn't beat Thom doesn't automatically mean that mental toughness doesn't play into every single race.

Agreed. That wasn't a serious suggestion for a competitive race strategy, or even a reasonable strategy for a decent personal race result.

I was offering an alternative way to approach this early-season meet. What if the purpose of this race is redefined to "train thru"? Well, in this case, given that everybody else is 10-30 sec faster over 1600 or a mile or whatever it was, here's an idea to take advantage of that and turn it into a workout:

Again - restated-- 800m at back-of-the-pack pace (staying right on someone last or near last in the lead pack), then 3rd lap a bit slower (say, 4-8 sec) than your current race pace, then last lap steadily increase pace every 100m adding in a sprint effort (may not actually be able to fully sprint).

Plus, add some sprint events to the meet. Now this early-season meet has been converted to a productive training opportunity.

Just an idea. Keep it creative, keep it fun, keep it developmentally in line with late season goals :)

Ugh. That was poorly stated. I meant, if you are going to use the race as a workout, maybe also run some sprint events at the meet.

I know what DOESN'T work in a race, because I tried it once, quite deliberately, back in the summer of 2005, I think it was, and it didn't work. But it taught me something.

I decided that the only way a breakthrough would happen in my racing was if I deliberately attempted to run better than I was. I picked a 5-mile run on a dead flat, out-and-back course in Grenada, Mississippi. It was a warm, humid mid-June morning. And I decided that I was going to go out in front, pretending I was the best runner, and do my best to hang on.

I don't have my journal here, but I remember what happened. I was probably in shape to run 6:50s, but I went out in 6:25, which was my 5K pace. Or maybe 6:15. Something clearly too fast. That put me in the lead. And then, predictably, at the one-mile point, and especially given the inauspicious weather, I started to hurt. I slowed. I just couldn't hold it, and my body KNEW that there was no way I could hold it.

I ran the next three miles, hurting badly, at 6:57s--all three miles within a couple of seconds of each other. That was my pace. And then in the last mile, as I closed in on a finishing line I could see the whole way, I ran a 6:40.

I don't mind hurting, but I DO mind hurting from the begining of the second mile of a five-mile race. That's what I discovered: breakthroughs don't happen when you're foolish too early. Here, Bob Glover's advice--"The first half's for pacing, the second half's for racing"--remains substantially true. Any fool can go out too fast. That's not where the breakthroughs will come. They'll come when you've paced well enough early on that you'll end up, if you're willing to hurt massively, be able to choose the moment later on where you stomp the pedal.

I was always proud of my decision to burn one race by way of conducting an experiment. I recommend that everybody do that at some point.

This is an interesting thread because I think it shows that one thing young runners need to do is learn how to race.

Part of that is developing strategies, both physical and mental, to deal with discomfort. To race tough. To not slow down just because it is getting uncomfortable. You have to be able to do this in order to run your best race, and lots of good ideas have already been offered up.

However, that is usually not all that you need in order to run your best race. For most of us, our best races do not come from burying ourselves in misery from the gun. They come from properly measuring our effort in order to produce the best result/time. They come from running some portion of the race up against the edge, but controlled, then reaching some sort of go point where we feel like we can blast it from there to the finish (even if that doesn't even mean going faster!).

There is still suffering and toughness involved, but there is also more of a mastery of the self, more control of the effort. To the OP, definitely try some ways to suffer and hold on, and when you learn them, incorporate those into ways to run your best race (not just a race in which you suffer the most).

As good as Brian was, him trying to keep up with Hunt is similar to what the OP is trying to do. Brian’s aggressiveness in that race likely resulted in him running 30 seconds or more slower than if he had gone out at a more conservative pace.

Rather than trying to bridge the gap with one heroic effort, the OP should aim for reasonably evenly paced PRs and close the gap over the course of the season.

Hunt did beat those guys everytime they raced in XC. He was outstanding in NCAA XC but not at the same level in track.

We can agree to disagree on the what the OP can do to improve.

However, Thom was outstanding in both xc and track but he did not beat Ortiz in every time they raced in XC.

You're getting a dichotomy of responses because we don't know exactly your situation. How old are you? How fast are you? How long have you been running?

For most experienced runners, running with someone 10-30 seconds faster than you in a mile is suicidal and ridiculous. That's why you are getting lots of comments along the lines of "just run your own race", "estimate your fitness, and then run that pace", etc. If you are already experienced and running mentally tough races, this is the way to go.

On the other hand, a lot of responses are more along the lines of "just stick with them as long as you can" or specific strategies to hang on when the going gets tough. These suggestions are assuming that you're significantly underperforming due to not running races tough enough mentally. This is common in new, slower, and younger runners. If you have more in the tank, you may not even know because you've never experienced a real, full-out race. If this is the case, those suggestions are excellent. You may get to 1000m way faster than ever before, and realize you have something left.

The only way that the "go out super hard and hang on" strategy works is if you are way fitter than you realized. Given the details in your post, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case, but we'll need more details to be sure.

update on how the race went?

My coach says I can break 4:50 and my PR is 4:59. He says its a matter of running till my legs gel. I think I've been running fairly hard up until this point, but I figure it hasn't been hard enough if that's the case. Plus, he's been pretty accurate with his predictions before, so I trust him.

And to mention, they're also going to be people slower than me in this race. Just a bunch of fast guys too.