When I competed in the 1st ever race hosted by the large Venice Run Club in Oct 2021, my goal was to run a 6:00/mile pace and finish top-10 OA, and I ran a 5:59/mile and finished 10th OA. Bam-Bam. As it relates to “under the wire,” my goal was to finish in under 18:39 (6:00 pace), and I finished in 18:37. There was not much room for error, so I had to trust myself in-the-moment, which is a very important phrase to learn as a runner, and guess where/how you learn it? Yup, track workouts!
Precision pacing…pace per lap using the chrono mode on your watch (i.e., elapsed time, ignore the “current pace” setting) is where you accelerate the learning curve. Side note: I have a similar mentality for hill repeats, as “pace” during hill repeats isn’t really a useful data point.
As with most road races I do, my fitness level/pace means that I (historically) tend to fall into the back/side pocket of the top pro women, so I ran with the top-3 overall (OA) women for most of the race, which also helps me figure out if I'm pacing correctly, since you can be damn sure that they are very well accustomed/adjusted to sensing correct pacing/exertion, given their vast race experiences. Little by little, some of the “mad dashers” (a.k.a., runners who go out like a bat-out-of-hell when the race starts) began to fade and I kept moving up the field, pulling away from people I had been running with for several minutes. I was not running faster, they were fading, there's a difference, but it definitely feeds the confidence! And you can hear it in their breathing, which, again, is a main goal of track work…to use your breathing (not pace) to determine if you're in the right zone/ “doing okay”.
On that note, at the 5-min mark of the race, I predicted the female winner, as she was the only one in that pack-of-three who I could not hear panting or exhaling too quickly, and yah, she won easily. That is how you know who to run/pace with vs. who to not chase vs. who you can expect to fade from you in a few minutes, and that is confidence in-the-moment!
With a mile to go, I was in a group of 5, and I paid more attention to them than I did myself, I listened to their breathing (like I do when I coach runners at the track) and I watched their strides, or lack thereof, as stride length (range of motion) is most important in terms of running form (not cadence or foot strike). When I checked my watch and it read “15:00-ish”, I knew I “only had 3 more minutes left of running”, which is a much more powerful/positive phrasing than “holy sh*t I'm tired, how much longer do I have…where is the finish line, I can't see it…blah blah blah.” So I used an old tactic of mine to chunk the race into “how much time do I have left?” I expected an 18:30 finish, so I knew that 15:30 on my watch meant that I only had 3 minutes left = 1 x 800m on the track (woohoo!)…I know I can do that easily, which yields the expression “the feeling that you've been there before” (confidence). I've done a thousand 800s in my lifetime, so I know I can run an 800m on tired legs (i.e., the final 800 rep of a T-workout, right?).
To reiterate, even if I can't see the finish line, I know how much longer (in minutes/seconds) I have to push myself. So rather than counting up, I'm now counting down…NASA style, and THAT is powerful! So with 4 people around me I began to increase my stride length (range of motion) a hair (and I mean a hair!). Their breathing increased, mine did not…ahhhh, I think I got 'em! I surged for 10 seconds, nobody stayed with me, I pulled away a bit more…nobody stayed with me, so now my confidence is through the roof regarding “them”, yet then it became a matter of me vs. the clock! No matter how tired I am, I will always kick the last 400m to the finish line and I do rely on this as part of my pacing strategy, and I hope I can give you that same ability/confidence through LA Running Coach. Do you trust that you will blast the final 400m as hard as you can? What a feeling! And a perfect displacement of overall energy expenditure over a 5k course.
To bring it back to the start line for a moment, once I settled into my own zone/pace 10 seconds after the race started, nobody passed me the rest of the race, but I passed ~15 people to hit my outcome goal (top-10). I focused on trusting myself in-the-moment (process goal…breathing/stride) in order to hit my performance goal of sub-6:00 pacing. Perfect race! Side note: My half-mile swim Time Trial earlier that week was to hit sub-13:00…I finished in 12:59.
Take Home Message: You must become comfy with the notion that you will hit your goal-time even if it's just under the wire. Short-distance race experience will help.
Train Smarter, Not Harder!
Mike