How should race pace feel like? (Read 1574 times)

    .. Gasping for air the whole way,..

     

    In my experience a good 5k shouldn't hurt that much in the first half - if you overcook it at the start you won't be able to hold it together well in the second.

     

    But your description seems about right for the last couple of km Smile

    half-fast


       

      Maybe we need a goal thread for throwing up at the end of a race. Smile

       

       

      Yes, although my results may not show it, I always run as if Mr. Pukey is chasing me.  If I'm luck he doesn't catch me until after I cross the finish line Smile

       

      BTW...This is why I love RunningAhead.  I just came from a tempo run with this same question in mind and *POP* there's a topic about it...

        Wow. Really interesting comment here, and I think this may have alot to do with where I go wrong all too often when I race. I get to mile 2 and think how am I going to deal with this for another mile and then start backing off. I also find that when you start thinking about how bad it's going to hurt down the road it makes the present worse.

         

        Thanks for that thought. 

         

        Thats exactly what I was thinking when I read Jeff's post.

         

        It also seems that if you give in to those thoughts and actually slow or ease up, you end up being really pissed at yourself afterwards when the race is over and the pain was not nearly as bad as you imagined it was going to be and you realize you just left some time on the course.

         

        The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff

         

        2014 Goals:

         

        Stay healthy

        Enjoy life

         

        DoppleBock


          I think it depends on what you train for / how you train.  If you train 5k and faster pace often - Maybe it does not hurt as early.  If you never really train that fast - 5ks can hurt a lot much earlier.  Last one I ran - It hurt pretty bad the 1st mile, buy bearable.  By the 1/2 way point I wanted to quit - pain at max.  I managed even splits the whole race. 

           

          In my experience a good 5k shouldn't hurt that much in the first half - if you overcook it at the start you won't be able to hold it together well in the second.

           

          But your description seems about right for the last couple of km Smile

          Long dead ... But my stench lingers !

           

           

          AmoresPerros


          Options,Account, Forums

            I think it depends on what you train for / how you train.  If you train 5k and faster pace often - Maybe it does not hurt as early.  If you never really train that fast - 5ks can hurt a lot much earlier.  Last one I ran - It hurt pretty bad the 1st mile, buy bearable.  By the 1/2 way point I wanted to quit - pain at max.  I managed even splits the whole race. 

             

            Apparently my experience matches yours: I almost always want to quit by halfway. (I run a fair number of 5Ks every year, and generally have even splits.)

             

            This might feed in to Jeff's hypothesis -- that the anticipation of another mile & half of pain is daunting, but as you proceed, there is less anticipated pain remaining, so it gets easier.

            It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.

            xhristopher


              It also seems that if you give in to those thoughts and actually slow or ease up, you end up being really pissed at yourself afterwards when the race is over and the pain was not nearly as bad as you imagined it was going to be and you realize you just left some time on the course.

               

              These thoughts go through my mind. The temporary pain of finishing the race strongly is less bad than the enduring pain of knowing you mentally gave in. You've got to play judo with the pain. Embrace it. Make it your friend and ask for more. Laugh in it's face then push through it.

              joescott


                Races, if actually raced, hurt.

                 

                True dat!

                - Joe

                We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.

                  Don't know what this says about my vanity but I have a strong fear of looking bad at the finish, I think I hold back quite a bit because of this.


                  jfa

                    Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

                     

                     

                     

                     

                     

                     

                      I think it depends on what you train for / how you train.  If you train 5k and faster pace often - Maybe it does not hurt as early.  If you never really train that fast - 5ks can hurt a lot much earlier.  Last one I ran - It hurt pretty bad the 1st mile, buy bearable.  By the 1/2 way point I wanted to quit - pain at max.  I managed even splits the whole race. 

                       

                      I've been experimenting a bit with pacing. I had my best 5k in some time recently - 19:30. That came off a 4:07 first km, so it wasn't even splits.

                      It's a difficult balance to know what is optimal. I don't do much speed work - but if I run at a constant pace it's certainly not constant effort - it gets harder to maintain that pace. I am coming to the conclusion that taking the first couple of km just slightly slower works for me. But it's easy to misjudge that too. A couple of times I've found myself with a really strong kick in the last 400m - but that's a sign that I could have coped with a slightly faster pace earlier. However you should be able to kick somewhat in the last few hundred metres - the last km is normally the fastest for me because I know that I can afford to go deep into the red zone as the line approaches.

                       

                      The other tricky thing is that your body is capable of different things on different days... and it's hard to know as you leave the start line exactly what you're capable of today.

                      DoppleBock


                        The races actually raced hurt comment ~ Often - yes.  Sometimes more or earlier than others.  Funny as I get older they seem to hurt every time and earlier.  When I was a few years younger.  I could often make it through 60-80% of the race running my max pace, and you knew your legs were bruning red hot - but not "Pain"

                         

                        Often in a marathon - It would be 16-20 miles it would start to hurt.  Now, I often feel like I am pushing through pain already in the 1st few miles.

                         

                        Maybe my perception has changed - But I think it has more to do with training paces in workouts ~ They used to be faster ... 3k-2 mile pace has now become 5k to 30 minute race pace speed workouts.  16x400 does not exist in my stable anymore.  Long marathon paced runs used to be done once per week ~ now I only run marathon pace in a marathon.

                        Long dead ... But my stench lingers !

                         

                         

                        DoppleBock


                          2 thoughts - taking the 1st couple of KM is a conservative approach and will allow you not to blow up and run a very good race.  I do not think this can yield a perfect race.  2nd - Maybe a different pre-race warmup would allow you to run the 1st couple k's faster? 

                           

                          . I am coming to the conclusion that taking the first couple of km just slightly slower works for me. But it's easy to misjudge that too. A couple of times I've found myself with a really strong kick in the last 400m

                          Long dead ... But my stench lingers !

                           

                           

                            These thoughts go through my mind. The temporary pain of finishing the race strongly is less bad than the enduring pain of knowing you mentally gave in. You've got to play judo with the pain. Embrace it. Make it your friend and ask for more. Laugh in it's face then push through it.

                            The better prepared you are; the faster you'd run, the more fun you'd have, the less pain you'd feel--not that you'll HAVE less pain, you probably have more but you'd be BETTER ABLE TO TOLERATE it.  

                             

                            I think Dr. Noak's Central Governor theory is interesting but there's more fundamental thing about human performance.  If you ain't got what it takes--and if you haven't developed what it takes--, all the judo playing you'd do with pain is not going to let you run a 4-minute-mile...or a 4-hour marathon.  I was watching the other day the heat of 2008 Olympic men's 5000m where Australia's Craig Mottram, a great white hope, didn't even make it through to the final.  It's NOT because he couldn't tolerate pain; it's because his body didn't move the way he wanted it to.  In essence, same thing with the OP's experience.  If you look at his long, he likes to run 5k, 10k or 21k.  Pace varies--varies a lot but it seems whatever the pace he feels like, he runs; mostly mid-8 to 10s (I think there's one 7:30 something, the day after he ran the same course at 10-something pace, the day before he ran the same course at 9-something; in other words, crap-shooting training in my opinion).  He ran ONE interval session in mid-August but I couldn't get the pacing figured out at all.  And he ran his 5k race at 7:10 pace.  If he ran that comfortably, there's something wrong with him!  In other words, he's not prepared at all!  The degree of "tolerating pain" is something people who had prepared well would talk about.  I don't think most of us are even near there yet.

                            Wing


                            Joggaholic

                              Based on all the responses, it appears that I need to learn to HTFU...

                              Wing


                              Joggaholic

                                In essence, same thing with the OP's experience.  If you look at his long, he likes to run 5k, 10k or 21k.  Pace varies--varies a lot but it seems whatever the pace he feels like, he runs; mostly mid-8 to 10s (I think there's one 7:30 something, the day after he ran the same course at 10-something pace, the day before he ran the same course at 9-something; in other words, crap-shooting training in my opinion).  He ran ONE interval session in mid-August but I couldn't get the pacing figured out at all.  And he ran his 5k race at 7:10 pace.  If he ran that comfortably, there's something wrong with him!  In other words, he's not prepared at all!  The degree of "tolerating pain" is something people who had prepared well would talk about.  I don't think most of us are even near there yet.

                                 

                                Yes, that is in fact how I run. I had no real training plans, I just run whatever I felt like at the time, and I'm sure that did not help me a whole lot being so unfocused. I was kind of contend with going out running 5 to 6 days a week regardless of pace, race training is a new territory for me.

                                 

                                DW said I was the only one looking like a road-kill after the 5k race, and I felt it was too much for me to handle. I totally did not prepare for it except for lowering my mileage a few days beforehand. The lack of preparation certainly had a lot to do with my struggling. (The reason I ran it was because the race is close by and right along my normal weekend running route, and I did the same race a year ago so I just figured I want to see how it'll go)

                                 

                                Crap-shooting training it was