Racing Wisely: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Performing at Your Personal Best by Sage Rountree

Author:Sage Rountree [Rountree, Sage]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sage Tree, LLC
Published: 2013-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Warmup

LET’S EXAMINE WARMUPS IN GREATER detail, as they can make or break your race by cementing your preparation to go at the right pace from the second the gun goes off.

The shorter the race and the more serious you are about performing well in it, the more important a warmup becomes. For a shorter race—a track race, a road 5K—the warmup is critical. In longer races, especially when you are covering the distance for the first time, the first miles can serve as warmup. Skipping the warmup and starting cold can even help you start at a reasonably slow pace in a longer race like a marathon or road century, where a congested start will prevent a fast start even if it were a wise approach. (It usually isn’t, unless you need to jockey for position to join a pack or to arrange yourself in the proper place as you enter a singletrack trail.)

Given what you’ve felt in your training, you should have a sense of how long it takes you to feel properly warmed up. For example, no matter how sluggish I feel when I start a run, I usually feel good by 18 minutes and 30 seconds into the workout. In training, notice when your legs and lungs seem to come around, and take a look down at your watch. It may be at a very specific time, like my 18:30, or it may vary depending on the state of your recovery, the weather, seasonal allergens, or other factors. This will be your baseline warmup length for races lasting around an hour, give or take.

Once you know how long your warmup will take, you can figure out when to begin. Start too early before the race, and you’ll be standing around while the effects of the warmup fade. If you don’t budget enough time, you’re missing out on the benefits of priming the pump with a warmup. This is why you plan any warmup ahead of time, controlling the variables you can, so you have more energy to cope with the ones you can’t control.

Any warmup begins with an easy effort, which should last for the first several minutes. If your nerves are high, remind yourself not to start the warmup too fast! In addition to warming up your body, this easy movement should help you feel more centered, calm, and capable.

As you feel looser, you can add a little intensity, in accordance with your race distance, intention, and goals. If you need to be in a certain position at the start of the race, warm up accordingly. Some races—an open-water swim, a bike race, or a trail race that quickly narrows with a turn into singletrack—will require an aggressive start, after which you can ease off. Prime yourself for such a start by including several short periods of hard effort at projected race-start pace, recovering completely in between. Here are suggestions for various sports and distances.

RUN

Start with an easy jog, ideally reversing the course

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