RACING FOR THE FIRST TIME

First race brings many questions and uncertainties, lots of expectations and worries about your skills and an ability to be where you would like to be, concerns about which shoes you need to wear and the weather.

Only one thing is certain - that everything is uncertain and the nagging question inside: “What to do and what to remember?” doesn’t let you find peace.

Well, you should know – you are not alone experiencing this hectic condition, but knowing that won’t make you feel better. You’re still starving for knowledge and a desire to reduce unknown factors.

First of all, during any preparation you have to remember what is under your control and what is not, so you won’t worry about things you can’t change, but you can still be prepared. Such factors as weather conditions, your competitor/ s (they shouldn’t be in your mind at all for the first race) are not under your control.

Your main focus should be on yourself and your actions related with your racing performance. It starts way before the race from a simple listing of things you need to do and prepare such as racing shoes, your racing uniform, food and drink before, during and after the race. This “to do” list is the subject of constant development related to your experience and it will get more extensive, and you’ll get settled into the sequence of events, which is called pre-racing procedure, but for now keep it simple.

You have to know the race’s starting hour and give yourself plenty of time for registration and warm up, you should also check out (at the very least) race’s starting and finishing areas. Also count the time required for traveling from your place of staying to the race sight. Before you leave your house you should look at your list of things to do and be sure that everything is in place so far.

During training you should get some idea of what kind of racing performance you are looking for. With the help of your coach, teacher, your more experienced friend, info from the books and different internet sources you can get some approximate idea of what would be a reasonable racing result at the present time. Then racing pace would be maintained around this expectation with consideration given to weather, terrain, and your current condition.

It is good to remember that your first race is your discovery of your abilities and it is better to under perform and feel that there is plenty of room for improvement, than get into the miserable condition of loosing ability to continue the race and be on a boundary of getting off the race or finishing with embarrassing feeling of weakness, horrible running form and etc.

So to avoid this you need to go into the race with a sober mind (excitement will be there no matter what) of what you want to do. You can control your cadence, pace and RPE (rate of perceived exertion). This is what you have to plan and execute during race, where the main action will be your cadence all the way through the race. Basically you need to concentrate on your technique. Pace and RPE will be additional factors you need to keep to be sure that you are still in your planned racing frame. Please don’t pay attention to anyone who is running faster than you (there will be lots of runners ahead of you and passing you), your business is to run your race and do your action no matter what’s going around you.

This mind set will help you go through your many races ahead and one thing that will always be consistent is a necessity to maintain your running technique at any weather, terrain, racing length and speed, your condition, the rest will be just facilitating factors.

Dr. Romanov