Yahoo Finance Looking forward to your next 5K race? Here's how not to do it
The beauty of the 5K is that, regardless of where you are on your running journey, it can either be a joyful jaunt around the park or a test of will.
With parkruns and 5Ks coming back, I’m going to talk about a few things you don’t want to do in a 5K. I’ve done them all and paid the price.
The worst piece of advice I ever got came just before my first 5K race. I should have had a plan, even if that was just to run at a comfortable pace. But, being the newbie that I was, I listened to someone who comfortably ran under 16 minutes for the distance.
‘No need for water – go out hard and hold on,’ he said. I thought that was succinct and sage. So I positioned myself somewhere in the middle of the pack and waited for the gun.
The pace at which the pack set off was something I was not ready for and hadn’t trained for, but, foolishly, I went with it. I was spent with 4.6km to go – that’s right, 400m into a 5K, I wanted to go home. I don’t think my lungs had ever burnt like that and I certainly had never tasted iron in my mouth before.
What was I playing at? That day taught me some valuable lessons and helped me build a list of things not to do in races, especially the 5K:
Don’t go to a race without a plan, even if that plan is to just enjoy it.
Don’t change something on race day that has benefited you during training. For example, if you are used to running with water in training, don’t ditch it at the start line.
Don’t jump into a pack of runners having no idea what pace they plan to run and don’t be afraid to jump out if the pace is too fast.
Don’t listen to the advice of others if it isn’t right for you. The advice I was given by the pro would have been perfect – had my aim been to run a sub-16-minute 5K.
Don’t go all out at the beginning unless you have trained for a quick start; the 5K is a short distance, but you don’t want to be left with lots of work to do and not much energy.
Don’t forget to do a dynamic warm-up to prepare your body.
Don’t think that this is the only 5K race you will run. The beauty of this distance is that you can try and try again to get it right; when you do, you will keep coming back.
When I race a 5K, I try breaking it up into four parts
For the first kilometre to kilometre-and-a-half, I run a little slower than race pace. This allows my body to warm up while I find my stride.
1.5-3km – I settle into race pace and, hopefully, find and hold on to a group of runners who are running at my pace or just a little quicker.
The middle of the race, between 3km and 4km, always seems to be the hardest, as you have to up your effort to maintain pace. I dig deep.
At 4km, I start to wind it up and give it everything I have, so it becomes a 1km all-out rep with a beautiful kick for home at the end.
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