Running is an Art and a Science

Running is an Art & Science that takes you on a journey of discovering who you are and what you are capable of.

As a coach I am constantly telling my runners to slow down, they look at me in a puzzled sort of way.  I say “Anyone, and I mean anyone, can run the first mile of a race at a fast pace, we can all boast that we were on for a sub 30min 5k, 60min 10k, 2-hour half or 4-hour marathon in that first mile but it's how you pace the event that matters, not the first mile”. 

Getting the pacing right for any race is an art and a science and it can take many races to perfect it.  There is a fine line between running a PB (Personal Best) or a PW (Personal Worse) and sometimes this fine line can be the difference between whether you hang your trainers up for good or whether you dust yourself down and try again, which let’s face it can be hard to do.

Sometimes we can put too much pressure on ourselves on the lead up to a big event if we focus on the time, we’d like to achieve rather than whether we can run that distance at the required pace.  Trust me, there isn’t a magic fairy that will make “this race the race where you pull it out of the bag” if you can’t run consistently at your goal pace you won’t be able to achieve your goal target time.

If you would like to run a sub hour 10k, which is great, I’m all for goals, but have a look at the pace for your target race? How near are you to this pace right now, how much work would you have to do to run that distance at that pace? Or are you limiting yourself, could you achieve an even quicker pace if you are exceeding that pace in training right now?

It’s also worth noting the route of the goal race, is it flat or hilly? Will you need to account for the inclines in your pace and will you have to dodge a lot of people? And what month is the race in? If it’s in the height of summer, how are you running in the heat? There are so many variables, some we can control, others not so much.

Having a pace that you know you can achieve can give you an abundance of confidence as you wait on the start line and this confidence can stop you going out too fast, blowing up halfway around the course and running those last few miles in a living hell! These painful memories can really knock your running confidence and let’s be honest who wants to re-live that hell, it really can suck the pleasure out of running. It’s good old-fashioned behaviorism, you become conditioned into thinking that running is unenjoyable because you have associated a memory with a negative experience.

If you focus on a time rather than pace you can also become disappointed in your effort, even if you ran a PB, because you feel you have let yourself down, when in fact you might have run an amazing race.

It is hard to try and turn your thinking around and a lot of the time I don’t talk to athletes about goal race times, I talk about pacing and how it feels to run comfortably and how it feels to run quicker in an Interval session and how you need to know your body and how it all feels to you.  It’s hard at times because only you can feel it, our watches just show us numbers, they don’t show us how we felt.

Try running without a watch so that you can feel your pace, run a little bit faster between lamp posts so that you learn where the difference is between feeling comfortable and uncomfortable.  Remember running is a journey; an art and a science, a bit like a recipe, see what works, what doesn't, you can take a bit of training out or add a bit more in until you find what works for you, re-adjust your goals, aim for pace throughout the race and not just finish time.