So you’ve done it. You’ve finally decided to put your money where your mouth is and you’ve signed up to your first race! You’ve likely got a mixture of excitement and apprehension and as the realisation sets in, you’ve rushed to Google to find out how to get yourself prepared for your race as those final days creep in.
What do I wear?
What do I eat?
What should I drink on the day?
I’m nervous, someone help me!
Luckily, you’ve ended up in the right place! I’m here to help and guide you through what you should be doing in the last few days before your race, how to get yourself through race day and what’s the best advice for that post race recovery. I will firstly talking through the guiding principles of how and why you should do each thing before giving my own personal methods. The key though is not to outrightly copy what I do as an individual but try and test various things before race day so that you have the best experience and don’t get caught out anywhere.
As someone who’s made mistakes and come to pay during a competitive race, I can tell you, it’s definitely best if you prepare adequately! You really don’t want to be doing any mid race pitstops in the woods. Trust me!
I’ll quit stalling and get into the advice that you came here for.
This is how you should prepare for your race!
Week Leading Up
I’m sure after signing up months ago, since then you’ve been trying hard to ensure that you are in the best shape you can be to give your best performance when you toe that start line. Running hard, practicing hills, climbing ropes and plenty of strength building gym sessions; you’re ready physically.
Or there’s the flip side of this… where you’ve not quite put in the effort you had promised yourself when you paid your entry fee and now, you’re starting to feel like you’re not going to give the showing you had envisioned. Don’t worry, no matter how apprehensive you are, you will be able to do it and get yourself through. A race will test everyone, no matter who you are, and when you cross that finish line, you’ll feel amazing. You’ve got this!
Whichever of the two is your situation, the final week leading up to race is going to look the same and these pieces of advice are useful either way, ensuring that race day goes as smoothly as possible.
Tapering Off
No matter how much training you’ve put in, the week needs to be for you to allow the body to rest, recuperate the energy that you’ve been expending and ensure that it is fully recovered across the board to all you to give everything. I know that if you’ve been throwing yourself into training for a while, it can feel counter intuitive to slow things down as you want to keep the momentum but actually, it’s good for you. I also know what it’s like being on the other side of this when you feel like you’ve not prepared how you would have liked to, which leaves you thinking that you need to push yourself in the last week to make up for it.
As much as you may want to do either of these things, I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t!
The week before needs to consist of a reduced mileage and reduced intensity of those miles, whilst if you’ve been training in the gym too, the sessions need to be brought down in intensity and volume too. Recovery and recuperation is the aim of the game with this week so that you’re muscle fibres are all fully repaired (or as much as possible) and your various energy stores within the body are replenished so that you aren’t caught short on the day.
So yes, you can still run, just with a reduced mileage and conducted in the easy range to allow active recovery. With it being in the easy range, you can still get your daily activity to allow you to get all the health boosting benefits whilst you minimising new muscle fibre breakdown requiring repair. It also promotes blood flow to the used muscle groups, aiding in the clearance of any waste products from the previous weeks and months of training, putting the muscles in their optimal condition.
As for the gym sessions, you may train as long as the intensity isn’t too high. The last thing you will want is to come into a race sore and weakened due to your killer gym session the day before race. The intensity should be that of an active recovery again, whilst leaving a good couple of days of complete rest before race day. If you really are needing to go to the gym in your head, go and do a yoga class or something of that ilk. This will being some great mobility to your body, reducing the chances of injury and with the right type of yoga, aid in that recovery process too.
Aiding this recovery process is going to be how you feed yourself, bringing me to the next topic!
Dial In The Diet
The first thing that comes to mind is the analogy of the fuel in the engine of a car: you want to put the best fuel in your car engine so it doesn’t break and runs smoothly, so why not do the same for your body?
In an ideal world, ensuring that you have a fully dialled in diet that supports your training and recovery is going to be what you want in life. However, life happens, we all have our vices and sometimes, things just don’t go as planned.
Again, whichever scenario best represents you, my advice is to definitely ensure that diet is dialled in as much as possible in the week leading up to the race. A week of eating nutrient dense nutritious food is going to leave you feeling a whole lot better by race day than if you spend the week eating junk food. Go with the former of these two options and you will feel so much better in yourself and your the individual cells of your body will be thanking you!
Not only will you be feeling better, you will have the best building blocks to allow the body to recover and replenish itself for the big day.
I’m going to be careful here with what I advise for the a diet leading up to a race, as I realise that diet and nutrition is very personal to each of us and what works for one person may actually have the opposite effect for another. Some generic rules that I can give though are, which are just as valid for everyday life:
- Carbohydrates – I’ll keep it simple but if you want to look into carbohydrate loading, give that a search. My advice here is going to be that all sources of carbohydrates need to be UNrefined sugars and starches. You want to be swapping in plenty of fruits, sweet potatoes and potatoes into your diet for those high processed items like breads and sugary snacks and drinks. Depending how you feel on them, I would potentially suggest the use of organic rice, quinoa and wholegrain oats.
- Protein – You want those muscle fibres to repair optimally and for this, you need to be giving yourself high quality protein. Again, my advice is that of non-processed forms of protein. What I mean by this is trade a burger for pure beef; trade the chicken nuggets for chicken breast; and definitely don’t be having any of those “meat replacement” foods!
- Fats – Don’t be afraid of healthy fats! These are the building blocks of your cells and hormones. This isn’t your free pass to hoover up all items of fried food though! I’m talking the fats that are found in eggs, fish like salmon and that found with animal sources of protein such as beef fat. Alongside this, avocados and unrefined cooking oils are great too such as coconut and extra virgin olive oil.
- Micronutrients – Something is often overlooked but key to having a well functioning body and mind. With the advice given above, you should be able to get those essential micronutrients, as long as the food you’re eating isn’t processed, refined or covered in pesticides.
One thing I will say here though is don’t let perfect be in the way of progress. You may not be able to afford the purest of food sources such as organic but making the change to these fresh foods will still be a great step for you.
If the diet side of things is a little confusing for you and you want a more detailed conversation, my emails are open to talk through my thorough thinking and learning on this topic.
Get On Top Of Your Sleep
Last but certainly by no means least during this week leading into it is your sleep! Sleep is one of the most important things that we do for recovery and setting us up for the next day. For many, we are living in a partial or completely sleep deprived state, masking this with a common stimulant known as caffeine. Under the hood though, our body could be screaming out for adequate rest and is holding an abundance of fatigue within it. All it could take is one overly strenuous activity to tip things over the edge.
You don’t want that to be race day, do you?
So in that week leading up to race day, as much as you can, you should be ensuring that your sleep is optimised as much as possible. This will ensure that you are in the best shape mentally and physically to attack the day. If you’ve not slept enough in that week leading up to the event, you’re likely going to be holding some physical fatigue from lack of the body recovering and some of the needed processes to keep you at homeostasis are going to be off. This will result in your body red lining sooner than you want.
Of course, you can overcome this with your mind and push through the pain of when the body tells you that you want to stop. However, being low on sleep will also cause the mind to falter sooner than you would want it to. Being fatigued mentally will mean that you’re going to be less resilient to the discomfort you may be in from running or going through an obstacle, makes you less resilient to the cold whether this is the weather or the water dunks, and overall, more likely to throw in the towel, which you really don’t want to do!
So, to conclude: you’re going to want to optimise that sleep!
Here are some tips that you can implement into your life so that you get much need rest and recuperation for yourself mentally and physically:
- Going to bed at a set time every night – Bringing your circadian rhythm back into a set pattern will do wonders for you, allowing you to sleep at the right times, allow all the various different systems of your body to sync back up and ensure that all your hormones are being secreted at the right time. This will do wonders for your sleep and make sure you are feeling awake and sleepy at the right times of day.
- Unwind at the end of the day – Through films, Netflix, the news or social media, we are activating our parasympathetic nervous system, up regulating ourselves and not allowing the body get into a rest and digest state. Trade this normal activities out for some stretching, relaxing music, reading and journalling. Another great thing to help the mind unwind as we are often fretting about what we “need to do”, get yourself a diary and plan the next day so feel calmer and more in control with the contents of your day.
- Minimise blue light – Viewing certain parts of the light spectrum can disrupt the secretion of our sleep melatonin thus meaning we don’t fall asleep when we should, having a huge knock on effect to the rest of the body’s functions directly or indirectly. Minimising or eliminating this for at least an hour before bed can ensure that this hormone is secreted so that when it comes to getting into bed, we drop off straight away. This means no screen time, plenty of pure amber hues from your lighting around the house and if needs be, night time blue light blocking glasses.
If you want to go into more detail on this topic, whether it be for sporting performance or your lifestyle in general, I wrote another blog on this very topic.
Day Before The Race
You’re either going to be nervous or excited about what’s going to come the following day. Wherever you may be on that spectrum, alongside the other advice given so far which you should continue with, there are couple of things you can do the day before to ease the mind and allow the morning of the race go smoothly. When you’re trying to get into the zone, you really don’t want things to be going wrong for you or else it’ll throw you off.
Register If You Can
Some races will allow you to register the day before. If you can, I would definitely advise this as it’s one less thing to worry about on the day, especially if there are some huge queues. If there are any race specifics, you have time to process them and action them as required in plenty of time.
Lay Out Your Kit
The last thing you’re going to be wanting it rushing around in the morning of race day, trying to find items of kit that you need for that day. So my advice would be to go through item by item and lay out all the kit you need for the next day to ensure that you have everything. For some races, this will just be a t-shirt, shorts, socks and your footwear. For others, like an ultra, you’re going to have a lot more stuff with you to keep you moving.
Plus if you’re a bit of a social media fiend, it makes for a good Instagram the day before!
Morning Of The Race
Here we are! The day has arrived and it’s time to go out there and make yourself proud. To make sure that you give it your best and come away with a performance that you’re happy with, implement these steps into your morning. They will either boost the performance that you have or ensure you don’t encounter any unwanted problems that are going to hinder your race significantly.
Food
It goes without saying that you need to have a good amount of energy for the day so food is something you’re going to need but there are couple of key rules to live by to stop you from having any digestive problems or ending up with a stitch.
You want something that’s got plenty of energy but don’t go over the top! Nobody likes trying to run with a heavy stomach, it feels awful and makes the whole thing unpleasant. So staying away from hard to digest foods is my advice here and for you, you’ll know what these are. From personal experience, I find overnight oats with plenty of berries, seeds and nuts power me for a whole race and won’t feel too heavy in my stomach but we are all different.
The other piece of advice is to eat at least 2-3 hours before you start. This allows for two things to happen. The first is you get through the bulk of digestion so you aren’t risking a stitch and focusing the body’s energy on digesting instead of moving, minimising what I mentioned in the last paragraph too. The other thing that’s going to be key is that if what you eat is going to prompt nature calling, it gives you too time to get this process done before the race rather than during.
I know from experience that having to stop for one of these pitstops isn’t pleasant and ruins your race time too! I guess the upside is you can embrace nature…
Hydration Including Salts
Making sure that you hydrate fully before the race is essential just make sure you don’t have TOO much or else you will be having to stop for a pitstop! The key thing to remember is hydration is just water. Our bodies need electrolytes too to function properly. This means that in the build up to the race, whatever your preferred method to get them, you consume an adequate amount of electrolytes to stop you from having any issues such as cramp or “hitting the wall”.
For this, I personally use a mixture of sports nutrition based salts and pure high quality sea salt like Celtic sea salt. Depending on the length and heat of the race, I will also take some salts with me to ensure I don’t face any dramas.
Register Nice & Early
If you didn’t manage to register the day before, schedule in registering on the day nice and early. This will give you peace of mind that you’ve got it done and allows you to concentrate on getting ready for the race. The last thing you want is worrying about is the speed of the queues when you’re start time is coming up!
Warm-Up & Pre-Race Rituals
This is a key part to your preparations before you set off running. You need to make sure that your body is warmed up, blood is flowing and the muscles are limbered up. If you miss this stage, you could easily end up with an injury and everything being over before it even began.
My method had two elements to it. The first part is to conduct this bioenergetics warm up, completing all the functional movements whilst bring in plenty of breath to the body. This both wakes me up and leaves me feeling charged up for the race ahead. I would advise doing this every morning of life, it’s a game changer! The second part is to conduct a variety of jogs, runs and strides, incorporating other drills to prime myself for when it’s go time. This makes sure that my legs are ready for the running that’s about to occur, which can’t be replicated with the bioenergetics. I typically do this in the last hour before the race.
As for rituals, we all develop out own little things that we like to do to focus the mind and bring us into “the zone”. Find what works for you. Personally, I find doing my bioenergetic stretches to motivational music or speeches (David Goggins is a firm favourite) before I have a London Nootropics Mojo coffee (use code “quilty” for 15% off!) 30-45 minutes prior, strip down to my racing attire and then have a moment to myself at the start line to focus the mind.
RACE!
There’s only one thing left for you do, get yourself to that start line and give it your all.
When you register, you’ll know roughly what time you will be running and when you hear the announcer at the start line calling your time out, that’s when you head off. There’ll be a motivational talks, the music, a rousing speech and maybe a warm up too to really make sure you’re ready before you’re given the go ahead.
Off into battle you will go to give it your all and do yourself proud!
Post Race
You’ve done it! All your hard work and preparation (whatever that may have entailed for you) has paid off and you were able to make it to the finish line! Get that well deserved medal, the t-shirt you’ve earned and your free drink! Bask in the glory of the moment! Saviour it and give yourself and those you’ve competed with a pat on the back.
After all that build up, you’re probably wondering what’s next? What do you do now that it’s all over and it was all you were concentrating on?
This part of the blog is a little bit of a bonus as I will give some suggestions on what you can do for yourself now that you’re finished to allow you to capture this moment forever and start the important process of recovery so that you’re not too sore the next day!
Make Sure To Get Those Pictures
Of course, if you didn’t post it on Instagram, did it ever truly happen?! I say this in jest but I’m sure you will want to grab a picture of two afterwards to help you remember this moment or to show off to your colleagues at work on Monday. There are usually a variety of banners around the event village for you to get a picture in front of to ensure no one is unsure as to what race you actually did. Either grabbing one solo or with your team, whatever takes your fancy, you can get creative and appease yourself.
Check Out The Vendors
Depending on the race that you are attending, there could be a number of vendors around that are giving away plenty of free samples for you to enjoy of their products. You can get some quality stuff to try and if you’re nice enough or time it right, you can bag yourself more than one!
Refuel
A common theme in this blog has been recovery and refuelling, and yes, it’s exactly the same for after the race too! Get yourself some high quality food and drinks into your system and allow your body to start the repair process whilst it fills up those energy stores. The sooner you start his process the better, so whether you bring something with you to have afterwards or you indulge in the number of food vendors around, get replenishing! Not that I support the notion in most embodiments of this phrase but the words “Big eats!” come to mind. You’ve got to get the energy back in your somehow, right?
Get Washed Up & Head Home
It’s worth checking prior to see if there are shower facilities available on site or not, even if it’s a cold one! The last thing you want to do is to be tired, wet and covered in mud, and having to sit in your car for a number of hours in that state. It’s just not pleasant. I know if it’s only cold water, it’s not going to be pleasant in most instances as you want to warm up
Then it’s time to head home to tell all your friends and family about what you just did! Go and inspire them to join you next time.
And of course because you would have loved the experience so much, to book your next race experience!
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