Tomorrow's the big day!

E

everypennyspent

0
Tomorrow is my first ever competitive race :eek2: I'm doing a 10km fun run and you wouldn't believe how nervous I am and I'm pretty much treating it like it's a case of life or death :eek:

Today I'm drinking a hell of a lot of water and snacking on carbs and planning on having a lamb pasta meal for dinner. Any other advice anyone can give me? Yes I do a 10km run about twice a month and normally do it in around 50 minutes but i've never competed with others!!

Tomorrow morning I plan on eating my normal museli and weetbix with skim milk two hours before the race and maybe a museli bar an hour before depending on if I'm still hungry. Does that sound ok?

Help :eek:
 
Im not going to give advice on what to do before the race because im not really a runner but I thought I would just say GOOD LUCk and have a blast dont feel nervous treat it like another run for you,
 
I try and employ the ' if it ain't broke - don't fix it ' approach to running a 10k race - meaning don't do anything different than you normally do when you train on your own.

For example, don't eat any different types of foods and at different times than you normally would before a run etc. etc. I don't usually eat anything 1 hour or so before a 10 k training run in normal circumstances, but for some reason I did during my first few 10ks...and it just made me feel out of sorts...so i stopped doing that pretty quick. Ditto with water. I never have water when I run a 10k out on my own, but for some reason when i saw all the water stations during my first few races, I stopped at all of them for water...it just threw me off, so I stopped doing that too. In both cases, I just got too ' caught up in the moment ' of it being a ' race ' !

In terms of another aspect of being ' caught up in the moment ', I would often start these races much, much too quickly. Your adrenaline is way up, you see everyone around you rocketing off at the start and you suddenly feel you have to keep up or chase them in some way. Big mistake...at least in my case. It threw my pace off and i didn't feel as strong near the end as I should have. If you're lucky, there may be so many people in the race, the pack of people you're in is going to start rather slow to begin with. If not, my advice is not to get to caught up in going hard at the start...start slow at first and then ramp it up to a steady quick pace for the last 5 k or so.

Obviously, by the time you read this you've already finished your race..so it may serve as food for thought next time out.

How did you do ? What as your time ?
 
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I hope your race went well - was it a St. Paddy's Day run? Those are usually a lot of fun. Being nervous is perfectly natural. I will echo an earlier post - don't eat or drink anything before the race you would not normally have before a run. Routines are good.

Let us know how you did.
 
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