5K race then long run or the other way ? (Read 607 times)

hey ph, funny you should ask. I just did this and am doing it again this weekend. I went race first and ran home. It felt way better than I thought and I had my best Easy run ever last night as a follow up. I think the long run after the race was good training for extending when you're near the end of a race. My 2 cents but so far it's worked well for me. cheers! Dave

I'm training for my first marathon and I've got two 5K races for charities coming up that's on the same day as my scheduled long runs of 13 and 16 miles...what's your opinion...do the race first or training run then finish up with the race ? I'm leaning towards the latter because if i run the race first i'd be tempted to run at a faster pace and then not having anything left for the long run ?

The same argument applies the other way around. If you run your long run first, you might be too tired to complete the 5k in a decent time. If you're running to race, then you should definitely run the 5k before your long run. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. You can run 2 - 3 miles before the 5k as a warmup, then run the 5k followed by the rest of the long run. This way, your long run won't be as long.

Running a race and a long run on the same day defeats the purpose of both. If you want to get anything out of it you are going to have to time it right. You should probably put the race in the late middle part of your long run. Run normal long run pace transition immediately into the race stopping for at most one minute and then immediately transition back into your long run. 6m-3m-4m. This way you have not broken up your long run and you are getting quality miles out of it.