How exactly do you race? (Read 1049 times)

Thank you all. Good stuff, especially in the last few posts. Teresa, tell your kids thanks. And if he ever gets bored and feels like typing out his race philosophies, tell him I'd be interested in reading.

I'll do that, JK! I think at this point, he doesn't "think" that much - he just gets out there and runs his heart out. In the 800, though, he's started to figure out how to hang back a little and then pass people. It will be interesting to see how his race strategies develop as he gets older. He is so determined to get faster that I know he will.

My 5k race tactics: Mile 1: Run at 30 to 60 sec faster than current fitness level pace. Mile 2: Suck wind badly as lactic acid eats away at my leg muscles. Mile 3: Finally gain some semblance of running form and using pure willpower to ignore unbearable pain try to catch one of the plethora of runners that passed me in mile 2. ....................That's how I roll

Nice race yesterday. 2nd...not too shabby!

It's not about pace, or time. It's about effort. Damn the torpedoes and the clocks. You need to know how hard you're pushing yourself, how hard you're pushing the competition, and how hard you are capable of pushing. You've got to want to race. You've got to want to beat your competitors. If you don't, you'll lose. Control yourself, control the race, control your opponents. This doesn't mean you go out and hammer down the first mile, just to die in the last. It means knowing what your effort level is for that given day. It means listening to your body, it means getting clues from your breathing, from the breathing of the people around you. You can hear when you start struggling. So can your opponents, I guarantee it. And that's what they're waiting for. It don't matter if you're the lead runner, or the middle, or towards the back. Somewhere, there is someone looking to pick off the dying to better his or her position. There's always someone to compete against, I guarantee it.

There are some excellent comments/suggestions in this thread and the article that Amy provided, especially concerning tactics when in a competitive environment, i.e., racing against other runners. I suspect that most runners race the clock or "against themselves"....essentially, a time trial. Although most like to finish as high in the standings as they can, they aren't concerned about someone else's race and they have no motivation to "break". Their primary objective is to get from the start to the finish as rapidly as possible, which requires setting a realistic goal and running one's most efficient race. The most efficient way to race is generally considered to be to run even splits on a flat, windless course or even effort when confronting varying terrain or wind conditions. However, in either case, the race won't feel the same from beginning to end. The first third of a race should feel relatively "comfortable", the middle third like you are running on the edge, and you should have to dig deeper to maintain even splits or effort in the late miles. Running an ideal or perfect race is difficult to do. Most times, we get the goal and/or pacing either a little too aggressive or too conservative with probably the biggest tendency toward the former....which is why so many sources recommend deliberately erring a little on the conservative and targeting small negative splits/effort. In any event, if one is racing against the clock instead of competitors and regardless of how accurately the goal was set and the race paced, there are still a couple of tactics that can help to squeeze all that one can from the last third of a race. I don't recall seeing at least one of them discussed here so far....using one's upper body to help maintain form and pace. For details, see http://mysite.verizon.net/jim2wr/id37.html. I've run 202 races and most were just me trying to run the fastest time that I could under the conditions. However, some of my best (and fastest) races were when racing age division competitors, such as this one....http://mysite.verizon.net/jim2wr/id189.html.

Some good tidbits in here. My first suggestion: Browse the archives at Run to Win - I write about this sort of thing often. The times that I run are important to me, but I race competitively and in those races where you finish is much more important than how long it takes you to finish. I really like the idea of finding a 5k race series in your area as an opportunity to get to know people. An even better way is to join a local club team. The area that I live in has a lot of good teams to race against. Once you put on a team singlet, you become a target. Better yet, you can run any local race and you'll quickly discover which teams are your "rivals" - especially if there is a team award. Any time that I run a race these days and I see somebody who runs for Triad/PR Racing, I make an extra effort to catch and run ahead of them. They do the same when they see a Dirigo jersey. I don't have to know the person personally to still get a better thrill than just trying to beat a random person, but I see the same guys at a lot of local races. (Since their team has merged 3 or 4 times in the past few years with other teams throughout New England, I often see guys I don't know that are from other states in larger races or out of state races.) If your team is a club team, they might not be as competitive, but if you can find one that competes in one of the local USATF Grand Prix series then you have goal races of different distances to practice your racing tactics at. What I love about running competitively is when I can break another runner. Maybe not so much in a long race like a marathon, where I tend to work with folks rather than against them, but anything short and I like to mess with their heads. It's almost impossible to do on a track, and can be difficult on roads, but in a cross country or trail race you need to keep an eye out for turns where you will be out of sight. That's when you want to put in a 10 second surge - anybody that is keying in on you is going to see you go around a turn, but they won't see you put in a 10 second up-tempo effort from whatever pace you were on. Make sure you are out of sight before you start. Then when they come around the turn and look up, you are a farther along than they were expecting you to be. If they try to keep up with you, then they are going to have to work harder than you did to close the gap. Ideally, they give up and fall back. This is harder to do on the roads because there aren't as many blind turns, and is just about impossible to do on a track because you are only invisible if you are lapping somebody or behind them. One place where you can use that strategy during a road race is on hills. You just wait until a bit after cresting a hill when you are out of sight. It doesn't work as well though because it's easier to go fast down a hill to catch up. Instead, what I like to do on hills is carry my momentum. Most people's inclination is to either surge up a hill as hard as they can or else to ease up on the uphill and try to make things up on the downhill. I'm not a huge fan of either strategy (although I tend to lean more towards surging up the hill as it plays to my strengths.) Instead, try to maintain your effort going up the hill. You'll slow down, but not as much as if you were taking it easy. Once you crest it, resist the urge to ease up and catch your breathe! Instead, carry your momentum over the hill and let it carry you down the other side. This takes a lot of practice and is rarely a natural thing for most runners. As mentioned in another thread, a good strategy is to draft off of better runners, especially when there is a headwind. (There is still a benefit though even if there is no headwind, because there is still a headwind, even if there is a tailwind. Here's why.) Let them break a path through the air for you. You can save not only physical energy by drafting off of somebody, but if you stare at their shoulders then you can save a lot of mental energy as well which translates to having an easier time later in the race as long as you aren't running beyond your abilities. That's the real trick, since it can allow you to run a lot faster than you think you might be able to, but once you pass that itty bitty point of no return, your race might as well be over. This takes practice, and it helps to know who you are racing against. I generally have trouble outsprinting people. I'm just not a naturally fast person. Here's a couple of stories where I had some success without having to outsprint somebody. These two stories involve a couple of my principle rivals on Triad/PR Racing. I first met TJ in (I think) 2004 during a small 5k. We were running together through the first mile when we dropped the only other person with us, and then traded spots for the next mile. I knew that I'd get outsprinted if we kept up with this - I didn't know TJ at this point, and he used to be a football player and was pretty big, but I could just tell he had some speed and would beat me to the line if he was close enough. No idea how I knew, as he didn't look fast, but he's outsprinted me enough times since then that I'm glad it occurred to me. I determined to leave him behind at 2 miles, and steadily built up about a 20 second lead on him through the last mile. I never had to worry about his sprint because he was far enough back to not bother trying before he realized how much I'd pulled away. I first met Chris at the New England Mile, where he beat me by a couple of seconds (this was 2 weeks after I ran a marathon in 2005.) A week later, he beat me by about 15 seconds in a 10k in Massachussetts. A couple weeks after that, he won by about 10 seconds in a 4 miler, although I had been pulling him in and would have beaten him if the race had been longer. So a month after that is the Beach to Beacon, a 10k race that serves as a great goal race in this area. Chris and I were racing each other for the first 5 miles, with one of us getting a short lead only to lose it to the other. Back and forth we went. This course has a fast downhill section from 3.5-4.5, and then a large rolling hill from 5 to 5.7 before you turn into the park and climb a very steep 150 foot bump before having a flat/downhill finish for the slightly less than last half mile or so. I had built up a small lead on Chris going up the hill (it remembered me) when we got to a very short rolling part where he passed me on the downhill pretty decisively. I was right behind him as we started going up again when I saw him turn to look over his shoulder for me. I knew what I had to do. I immediately moved to his other shoulder and out of his peripheral vision, and as soon as I saw him turn his head back to looking forward (and thus, seeing me) I said, "Don't worry, I'm still here." Then I took off and left him behind. That's gotta be my favorite time that I broke somebody in a race. After the race he came up to me and told me that when I took off, he just said to himself, "Holy $^%#, screw that" and gave up trying to catch me. That's what I live for. So a couple of lessons from those stories: 1. Know your limitations, and turn them into strengths. Do that by either working on them until they don't limit you in a race (me and downhill running, for example) or acknowledge them and avoid situations where they'll bite you (putting a lead on with a near finish line sprint a mile early to avoid a sprinter, for example.) 2. Never look back - it's an admission of weakness and will turn somebody you've broken into somebody that knows they can catch you and will energize them to try harder. 3.Look up ahead - if somebody else turns back, you own them. Energize yourself and HTFU. Can't let them beat you if they are looking back. 4. Look down and/or use your ears for somebody near by - there aren't a ton of silent runners, and I can often tell one person's footsteps from anothers when I hear them coming up on me. Listening is better than turning back because you can get the same information without risking them seeing you turn back to look. In the same vein, look down at your feet for people that are behind you, or use your peripheral vision to search the ground. Unless you are running towards the sun or it is raining, then you can see who is near you by their shadows. 5. Trash talking is allowed - Feel free to mess with somebody's head in a competitive race, especially if you can manage to not sound winded. 6. Trash talking is overrated - Be careful you don't trash talk and then give somebody the motivation to beat you because of it. I've found it is far better to offer a "word of encouragement" or "advice" where you seem to be helpful, but you really just want them to know they got nothin' on you and that you are stronger then they are so that they'll give up. I've had much better luck this way. Another advantage of having a team is that it turns a race into World War II, so you don't even need other teams to be competitive. You are of course the good guys, the Americans (at least in my part of the world.) The other teams, they are the Germans, and the random runners are the Italians and the French. They need to be beaten at all costs. Your teammates, they are the Russians. You want to work together, and you are technically on the same side, but at the same time you can't quite trust them. If everybody else is defeated, you need to protect yourself and make sure you are in the better position. I also advise against fist fights during races. The one time that I got into one was when I was a freshman in high school, about maybe 5 feet tall (if you are generous), and it wasn't much of a fight. A bigger kid grabbed my singlet from behind and yanked as we were going into a trail that was only wide enough for one of us at the entrance (wide enough for 3 once on the trail) so that he could get ahead of me. I punched him in the back and sprinted ahead once on the trail, and I never saw him again. Literally. We raced that team a lot, and I never saw him at another meet, I think getting beat by the tiny kid made him quit the team. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky. In college racing especially, there can be a lot of elbows and spikes placed in strategic and tender areas. My friend John was getting into it with a guy from Buffalo, when another Buffalo runner came up from his blindspot and checked him hockey-style, sending him off the trail. I didn't see it, but nobody was happy at the end of that race. Other than that 1 punch as a 13 or 14 year old, I've tried to stick to just incidental contact for the most part, especially since graduating college. This is made easier by road races thinning out and starting slower than most track races and not leading directly into a turn. Those are a few nuggets off of the top of my head. Later on maybe I'll go through and include a few more links than the couple I put in for stuff I've written about before. I should turn this post into a newsletter article...

5. Trash talking is allowed - Feel free to mess with somebody's head in a competitive race, especially if you can manage to not sound winded.

Well, that's the trick isn't it, not sounding winded in a short race.