What not to do on a race day

What not to do on a race day


This is from personal experience and writing after getting done nicely. These are some of the things i've learned the hard way. Weeeell only parts that is applicable to running. Otherwise i can write a book about other experiences while going through the journeys.

Show up late or not giving enough time; Needless to say, if you tun up late for the race, it is gone, there is pretty much nothing you can do, nada, nein, nope. Today showed up ten minutes before the race; so had to rush to get through the registration, put the race number; go to the start line, Soon as i got there race started. If i got two minutes late, it would have gone..... no running

Sleep- Make sure you get enough sleep; Dont try to do a race if you slept two 3 hour slots for past couple of days. Body is already tired of lack of sleep and energy channels to different parts. Also concentration seems going all over the place thanks to tiredness. Less focus.

Warm up. Warm is extremely important to quickly adopt to the race pace; environment. Also for injury prevention. Not too much or not to little. Too much would take away too much of your precious fuel. This goes with training as well. Start slowly, get the hart rate up, get the legs moving. Get all the stiffness out of the joints and let blood flow going to all the muscles. Talking about too much warm up; i cycled for about 4 and half miles to get to where the race is; also knowing i am running late put more gas on the peddles and by time i got to start sure warmed up but way too much.

Stretching- worm up and stretching is like letters and stamps. They have to stick together if you want to go places. Stretch your legs, back, shoulders; You need to be flexible like elastic before you start the race. More the merrier as this would keep you injury free or minimise. If you tend to rollover your ankle, if you stretch your ankles properly on a regular basis; even if you rollover your ankle it does not matter any more as you are prepared for this.

Good starting position; Not having a go at the slow runners. There are runners with various abilities. Some are slow some are fast. If you stay at the back of peloton and if you think it is slow where you are and want to mover to the front; this is where you have to do all sorts of dummy moves; hopscotch and jump up and get around.

New shoes or cloths- Race day is not there to experiment with accessories. If you are not comfortable with the brand new pair of shoes you bought and cant wait to take them for a spin; dont make it your race day. It would lead to lots of uncomfortable moments if the shoe does not fit. If the cap fits ware it. No worries, the worry is if it doesn't.

I'll write part two of this tomorrow. Today 10 miles at 1 hour 5 minutes. Didnt go according to plan. I have to be able to do ten miles under 50 minutes, if i have a slight hope to go the Olympics. One of my biggest (super) heroes is Eddie the eagle. So if Eddie can do it, weeel and an average joe can do as well. The positive is i reduced my time over the same distance by 4 minutes from two months ago. I truly belie i can do better but that comes with hard work and dedication so i think i can i think i can...........