Have a Happy Easter Sunday and enjoy the holiday with a nice morning run. I am not sure if the hard boiled eggs you found hidden are a good pre-run meal but they will be better after the run.
It made me recall the different pre-race meals various runners ate before a run. The carbo-loading practice of pasta before a marathon was almost always a favorite. A majority of runners that ate spaghetti the night before failed to deplete their body of carbs the three or four days prior to the race so that when they ate the pasta the day before the body would absorb more carbs and supposedly help the energy level during the race. I had a friend that ate three pancakes an hour before a race. If I ate a meal like that before a race I know I would crash about one mile into the race.
Another point about eating before a race was probably practice to help run a faster race and possibly set a new PR for yourself. There are several theories about running a fast race and trying to set a record for that distance. When I trained runners to run a marathon, I usually told them that we would try to run a 3 ½ hour time. That is an 8-minute pace average for the race. Several of the runners wanted to run every mile at that 8-minute pace. I told them to just follow my pace and we will be close to the 3 ½ hour time at the end. I started out at 8:30 or slower for the first few miles. One race three of the group were worried that it was too slow and took off running faster. We passed them sitting on the side of the road about mile 23.
Very few races are ever run at a constant pace for the entire distance. This is from a marathon to 100 meters. I had a film on running and one segment had the record holder for the 100-meter dash explain his strategy. He had at least four or five segments in that 100-meters that he ran with a different strategy. He said he started out “slow” and gradually picked up speed. He said, “At the end it looked like I was picking up speed and passing runners at the end. It wasn’t that I was running that much faster as much as the other runners were slowing down because they burned up all their energy in the first 50 meters.”
A coach by the name of Meyers had a theory for running a marathon. He would put down the time you wanted to finish the marathon and he divided the 26.2 miles into 5-mile segments and had a different percentage of the total time for every segment. There was never a pace that went the average pace for finishing the predicted time. I tried it several times and it worked great. I had to run 3:10 to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I put down a 3:05 time just to be sure. I followed his percentage of paces for every 5-mile segment and finished in 3:03:50.
This is true for almost every distance. I wanted to break the :40-minute mark in a 10K. I took off fast at the start because I was trying to set a record and thought I had to run faster. Between three and four miles I was ready to walk the rest of the way. I gave up on trying to reach the :40-minute time. I entered a race with no thought of running that fast. I started slower and at that three and four mile mark where I usually crashed, I felt good and picked up the pace. I finished at 38:30. I just needed to understand that the race is not won at the starting point and you have to have enough energy and stamina to have a good finish pace or even a “kick” the last hundred yards to set a new PR.
It helps to have some training runs where you run at a faster pace than normal. With the faster pace over several training sessions going back to the normal race pace will seem slow. During the race your usual effort will be a few seconds faster. It seems that starting “slower” lets you finish “faster” in almost any race. I sometimes wish I had known that in college when I ran the 440yard dash. I sprinted out in first place the first 110 yards and got passed at the 330-yard mark by several runners.
I had no finishing kick the last 110 yards.
