MPR wrote:
While we are on this topic of racing, here is some more thoughts on the subject:
Race Goal Setting
I am a very strong believer in goal setting, for most everything you do, but especially for training and racing. Setting goals helps to keep us focused and gives a sense of purpose to what we are doing. I believe in setting 2 types of goals: primary goals and secondary goals. Primary goals are things that we can directly control, and secondary goals may include items we may not be able to be entirely directly control.
Primary goals are items such as executing a smart race plan and giving 100% effort in the race. We can directly control these items and by putting our primary focus on these items all other goals will take care of themselves for the most part. We can not control the course, the weather or what other competitors show up or what they do. So items that are dependent on these should not be included as primary goals.
Secondary goals are things at we can only partially control but that are important to us. Secondary goals may include things such as our time, our place, beating a rival or setting a new personal best.
Race Plan – Smart Race
A smart race strategy is one that will allow you to complete the race in the shortest amount of time. In order to know what the best tactic is for running a smart race you must know many things including: the race course, the race conditions (weather, crowds, etc), your training leading up to the race, and your strengths and weaknesses (physically and mentally). Let’s talk about each.
• Course - a careful examination of the course prior to the race should be done (to the extent possible). Know where the hills are, where the turns are, where sections are particularly open to the wind, where the split markers are, were aid stations are, and what the approach to the finish is like.
• Conditions – do your research; know the weather forecast, the race day (particularly pre-race) time schedule, the way starts and finishes are handled.
• Training – review your training log, where have you excelled in training, where have you fallen short, what has the sequence of your workouts been, look for useful information in formulating a race strategy.
• Review prior race logs. What has and hasn’t worked for you in the past? Did you run this course or race previously? What strategy did you use? Learn from the past to execute better in the future.
Then take all the information you have gathered above and formulate your race plan, commit to it fully and take ownership of it. If the conditions or course changes during the race, the intimate knowledge of the race plan and the reasons why it was put in place will help you make any in-race adaptations necessary.
Things not to do:
• Do not make any major component of your strategy based on something you don’t directly control (like someone else).
• Do not second guess or doubt your strategy – instead, own it and believe in it.
100% Effort in Racing
In order for an athlete to get 100% effort out themselves in races ,they need to be able to push right up to the physical limits of their body and that requires the ignoring or tolerance of the early warning cries of the brain without altering intensity. The runner’s motivation and commitment to a 100% effort are MAJOR factors in their ability to do this. Additionally the brain can be callused to “get use to” these approaches to the physical limits and delay or lessen its initial warnings cries.
As we just stated, motivation is a key ingredient in the runner being able to give a 100% effort in a race. It takes significant motivation and will power for the runner to overcome the warnings cries of the brain that the limit is near. Therefore it is logical that the stronger, more consistent the motivation is, the better and more consistent the runner will be able to be in giving 100% efforts (or close to it) in races. Motivation is a largely an individual question. What motivates one person may not work for another person. But some types of motivation appear to be less consistent than others. So a major key to a runner being able to run 100% effort in a race is for them to find and understand what motivates them. Motivation should be a major topic in race logs in order to help the runner understand and hone them.
Race Log
I strongly encourage you to keep a detailed race log or journal. In it keep at least the following information for each race (at a minimum):
1) Detailed description of your strategy going into the race (write this before the race)
2) A detailed description of what happened in the race, include warm-up and any other details you feel are important - include mental thoughts and feelings
3) List things that you think you did very well in the race and that you did poorly in the race
4) Try and determine why you think you did the items listed in #3
5) What did you learn from the race
6) What things do you want to change in future races
By doing this you make every race an experience you can learn from and it may provide you with valuable input for future race planning and feedback on areas you may need to work on in your training.