Ep 17 - My Top 5 Race Day Tips

In this episode of the Progress Pod, Jordan shares his top five tips for race day. Tip number one is to lay out everything the night before, but avoid trying new shoes or socks. Tip number two is to practice your fueling and nutrition strategy before race day. Tip number three is to plan your travel arrangements to the start line to avoid stress. Tip number four is to stick to your planned pace throughout the race. Finally, tip number five is to enjoy the event and embrace the occasion. By following these tips, you can have a smooth and enjoyable race day experience. Hello and welcome to episode number 17 of the Progress Pod and it's me Jordan myself today chatting through my top five running race day tips. So as I mentioned last week on the carb loading episode September was a good time to dive into some running content. There's a lot of events coming up in the near future a lot of the autumn events. I've got a lot of members of the Progress Project doing the Edinburgh Half Marathon, the Great Scottish Run 10k, the Great Scottish Run Half Marathon. Lots of other events as well that are happening over the next few weeks. So it'll be a great time to dive into some running content and good timing for anybody who's listening who's got a running event coming up. So in terms of tip number one we want to lay everything out the night before and make sure we don't have any new socks or new trainers in that pile. We don't want to be trying any new shoes, socks, anything like that on race day. We want to be wearing shoes that we are comfortable in, that we've tried before and we know are not going to be causing us any issues and also when it comes to laying everything out we want to make sure we've pinned our badge on to our top in terms of our running, our race number. Have everything ready and laid out. The least amount of stress that you can have in the morning the better. The last thing you want to do is wake up in the morning, you're rushing about, you're like oh I need to keep this on, actually have you got any safety pins on, oh I can't find any, I can't get my number on. You don't want to be giving yourself any unnecessary stress. You want to be going into that race as relaxed as possible. One of the best ways to do that is the night before, get everything sorted out and laid out with no new shoes or socks. Please do not try and lay out some brand new shoes out the box because that's not going to end well. Also we want to have practiced our carbloading, our pre-race meal and our intra-run fueling beforehand. We don't want to be eating something brand new on the morning of race day that we've never had before prior to running. We don't want to be opening a packet of fresh gels of a brand that we've never tried before to take with us. We want to have made sure that we've practiced everything around fueling prior in our training. We want to have practiced carbloading, as I've went into in detail in the last episode. We want to have practiced a pre-run meal that sits well with us. We also want to have practiced taking gels during the run. If we've practiced all that, we don't have anything to worry about and make sure we're just keeping to the same plan, the same thing that we did in our longer training runs. So that's number two, practice your fueling and your nutrition strategy. Number three is to just make sure that you check all your travel arrangements and you have a clear plan on how to get to the start line. So this just sounds maybe a bit self-explanatory, but honestly, when you're going to events, sometimes it's a really busy one, it can be quite difficult, it's not as straightforward as, oh, I'll just turn up there. Sometimes there's road closures, sometimes there's different train timetables, different bus timetables. So just make sure that you've got a clear plan on your travel arrangements. If you're driving, you know where you're parking, you know how you're getting to the start line, making sure that we're leaving in enough time. Make sure you've got that all planned out. Don't leave it until the day to wake up and go, oh, when should we leave? Oh, I think we should leave now. Oh, actually, we're not going to get there in time now. Another thing that we want to avoid with regards to creating stress. So my number three top tip is to make sure all your travel arrangements are sorted prior. So that on race day, we get up, we know exactly what we're doing, we know exactly when we're leaving, we know exactly how we are getting to the start line. It's all about minimising stress. Number four is to stick to your planned pace and really, honestly, especially at the start, I cannot emphasise enough how important this is. I've really felt the negative effects of not adhering to this and I vowed after it that I would never go against. This is one of my biggest tips and whatever pace you've been training for, whatever pace you have set, regardless of how you feel at the start line, you want to stick to that. At the start line, if you think about it, if you have tapered off, you've had a bit more of a relaxing week in terms of running volume, you've carb loaded, you're going to be going to that start line probably feeling fresher than you have for the last few months, especially before, probably the freshest you've felt since before you started your training plan because your legs are going to be recovered, you're going to be full of glycogen, full of energy, you're going to have a buzz with the adrenaline of it being race day and everyone around you, you're going to feel amazing. So what can typically happen is you start, you get pulled along with others, you've got the adrenaline pumping, you look, your first kilometre is like a minute faster than your planned time but then you're like, actually I feel good though, so let's just keep going and then what happens is we just keep going like that until halfway through and we blow up, we hit the wall, our body's not trained or conditioned to be running at that pace and we just struggle and the rest of the race is a nightmare. You might cramp up, you might not even get to the finish line and you're going to get a much worse time than you planned for. For instance, for me, first ever marathon I'd ever ran, the full time during training, at this point I was working in miles and pace per mile so I don't actually know what it would be per kilometre but my plan was to run at 7 minutes 30 per mile and I think if I just stuck to that it would have got me about a 3.18, it would have got me sub 3 hours and 20 minutes if I stuck to that pace but got to the start line, felt good, first mile in, 7 minute 20, I was like, well that doesn't feel okay, second mile in, 7 minute 19 or something like that so I was like, ah I'm staying quite consistent at this pace, let's just do that, it's only 10 seconds faster than what I'd planned. Got to mile 18 and I absolutely collapsed, like my mile pace went from like 7.20 to like 8.30 for the last like 6-7 miles, ended up getting 3.27 as my time which is still, I was still pleased with the time overall for my first marathon but it was a good 10 minutes shorter than I would have got if I'd just stuck to my planned pace that I'd trained for. So just a really, really big lesson there whatever pace you are training for or whatever pace you agree to do at the start, so sometimes you're on a training block you might change the pace halfway through just depending on how things have been going or maybe there's a few weeks out and you've really been flying and you think, right we can actually go a wee bit faster than what we've been training at but that'll all be decided within a week before so whatever you decide as this is the pace we're going to go for, you need to stick to that and do not change it and speed it up on race day. There's going to be a temptation to do so after the first 1 or 2 kilometres but please, please settle back into the pace and don't try and go too fast because it's got the higher chance of you resulting in not getting at the time you want. You think that running faster you'll get a better time but you're probably going to likely get a worse time so just bear that in mind, that's a big, big tip from me, stick to your pre-planned race pace, especially at the start. If you say get to the last few kilometres and you've still got energy in the tank and you feel you can speed up, great, go for it but don't do it the opposite way around, don't start out too hot because then you're going to struggle so just go out your planned pace and if you're getting to the last few kilometres and you feel you've got energy in the tank, by all means beast it at that point because you're near the end, just don't do it from the start. And then tip number 5 is enjoy it, enjoy it and embrace the occasion. If you've never done a running event or if this is your 100th running event you'll know that they are amazing days. The atmosphere is always great regardless of the weather, regardless of what's happening, you've got great atmosphere, you've got a load of other people in the same boat as you, everybody pushing each other along and it's just a really, really great occasion and topped off by a great achievement at the end of it so just make sure to enjoy it, embrace it, take it all in and have a great time and if you stick to these tips you're going to make it as enjoyable as it can be. If you don't stick to these tips then you may not have a fond memory of your running event but stick to these top 5 race day tips and things will go as smoothly as possible. You are controlling what you can control, as I said you can't control the weather, you can't control what happens on race day but you can control these things so if you stick to these tips then you're going to give yourself the best chance. But again hopefully this was useful as I said, short, sharp episode from me, actionable steps that you need to implement going into your next running event and as always if you've enjoyed this episode make sure to take a screenshot, share it, post it, tag somebody that would need to listen to this, someone you know maybe who's got a running event coming up, share it with them and just drop some essays and let me know how you found it. Any questions or anything around race day make sure to reach out but yeah hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll speak to you on the next one.