Legs ALWAYS tired on raceday

I assume you don't run hard the day before or walk too much the day of.

You may be resting too much, though...laying around all day can make you lethargic.

Drink water.

It may be mental. Too much thinking about the race.

Your mind is an inhibter.

no matter what, my legs always feel tired, i think it has something to do with the nerves. I'll feel great in the week leading up, and then my legs just feel like junk on raceday,but ill still pb.

X Runner wrote:

I assume you don't run hard the day before or walk too much the day of.

You may be resting too much, though...laying around all day can make you lethargic.

Drink water.

It may be mental. Too much thinking about the race.

Your mind is an inhibter.

I've started to run the day before now and seen a slight improvement on the condition of my legs

The occasional ice or very cold bath works wonders.

Take TWO days off or easy. I always crosstrained two days before and took the day before completely off. My warmup would feel so easy, I would be running 20 seconds per mile faster than the usual effort.

I always had luck with a short morning run with some 30 second pick-ups.

The one thing which I have always found is that long walks throughout the week of the race really help loosen up the legs. Kenyans think nothing of going for walks lasting many hours. I found that a 2 or 3 hour walk at a very slow pace works wonders for my legs. Nothing else works for me.

When do you do the 2-3 hour walk Silky?

Rather than tapering the week before a race, taper twelve days out until five days out. Then run decent workouts for three days and take short--3-4 miles--runs the two days before the meet.

brahsuf wrote:

What are some things you guys do to make your legs more fresh? Please I really need help

rippy cripple wrote:

Take TWO days off or easy. I always crosstrained two days before and took the day before completely off. My warmup would feel so easy, I would be running 20 seconds per mile faster than the usual effort.

Not good advice if you ask me (though I do keep in mind different strokes work for different folks). I like what X Runner wrote with running more and the mental aspect. I used to have the same problem. I'd run a max 3 miles the day before the race and the day of I felt dead. Now I run 10 miles the day before (in 2 runs) and 3-4 miles the morning of the race (if its a late afternoon or night race). The mental aspect is the biggest part for sure. You think you should feel super so even the slightest bit of 'non-super' feeling you have gets amplified into feeling terrible (it's like when you walk through a spider web and get all freaked out and every little tickle feels like a spider crawling on you).

Another big thing is just don't worry. You have good, fast workouts, I assume? Well just do whatever you do before a good workout. The day before just tell yourself tomorrow is a workout day.

Relax

it's mental. i used to feel the same way, just wondering how i would finish the race; but once the gun went off, i would forget about it.

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miles are good wrote:

rippy cripple wrote:

Take TWO days off or easy. I always crosstrained two days before and took the day before completely off. My warmup would feel so easy, I would be running 20 seconds per mile faster than the usual effort.

Not good advice if you ask me

I wasn't asking you. I just stated what has worked for me through years of racing. Most runners don't run enough when they are training (because they run too fast too often) and they run too much when they are racing (never being well rested to run their best times)

Take the period from 7-10 days before a race really really easy. For example rest day-easy-rest day for those three days.

For those that use hard-hard-easy week periodization will know this : you feel shitty in the easy week but great at the end of the first hard week again.

Same with the tapering before a race ; your muscles need some activity the days before but at the same time be properly rested. Therefore rest the week before instead of the days before a race.

Marius

i never have a rest day b 4 a race anymore - if im tapering for a big/good race - will have a day off 3 days b 4 race, then the 2 preceeding days will do 35-35 mins easy maybe with a quick stride or 2 and then race day = BOOOOM!!! try it

rippy cripple wrote:

miles are good wrote:

Not good advice if you ask me

I wasn't asking you.

Did I say YOU were asking me? Because I'm pretty sure the person who made this thread WAS asking me (hence the reason he MADE the thread. Idiot. And if you read my entire post (or at least finished reading the FIRST sentence) you would have seen that I acknowledged the fact that different things work for different people. You stated what works for you, I stated what works for me (So far my routine has taken 20 seconds off my 3k time from last year and I still haven't peaked (8:45 to 8:25)). And to me it sounded like this guy is resting a lot before his races so I figured maybe he had the same problem as me. Now that we both posted he can think about which one would work for him.

it's not physical, he states it's a mental thing

visualization exercises, believing your legs will feel good etc will do it....

start a couple days out , also helps to think of every little thing that could go wrong and how you would handle it...that way when it happens, no big deal