Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Race Week Workouts

Is there a magic formula for doing just the perfect race week workout?  There may not be an exact formula for the ideal race week workout, but there is a smarter way to train race week. The race week workout is important to stay sharp and to hopefully add just that little last bit of confidence going into your big race. Many times runners fall into the trap of doing too much just so they can feel at ease that they are fit and ready to go for their race.

For example let's say you have a 10k race on Saturday?  What day of the week should you be doing your race week workout? What kind of interval/workout volume should you log? What about pace of the workout?  Some general direction I can give is to make sure the workout is not too close to your just completed Sunday long run or previous weeks' race. The best day to do the race week workout would be Tuesday and as a backup day on Wednesday.  This should allow for enough recovery on both sides of the Long Run and before race day that week. It would be great if your workout goal would be to hit race pace splits, but make sure to give adequate rest between intervals. If you normally take 60 seconds rest in between 800m repeats race week take 2 minutes. If you normal volume of workout mileage is 4-5 miles drop that to 2.5 or 3 miles so you can still get in the work to stay sharp but not overdo it.

Error on the side of taking "too much" rest and doing "too little" volume and you will be fine for your weekend race.  Make sure to give yourself that best chance to race well and this does not come from doing 20 x 400m or some type of time trial the week of a huge 5k or 10k race.

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