With the racing season only being around the corner, some of you maybe be wondering, how do you prepare for races? What do you eat? How hard do you train? How often do you train?
Well, you’ve come to the right place. Team Accelerate athlete and Scott Supported runner Harvey gives you a little run down on his race day routine. Well, race week routine as he talks through what he eats and how he trains on the build up to a race.
How do you prepare for a Race?
‘If we use a Sunday race as an example the week really doesn’t change until the Thursday, all I try and do is keep training easy and make life less busy. Attempt to not eat too much rubbish and avoid any oily food.
Thursday rolls round and it’s time to ease up, my first run drops to 20 minutes and the evening session are much shorter. Normally consisting of some faster 200’s and 100’s to make sure everything is firing. After this session I eat a little more than normal focusing on simple carbs this normally ends up being rice and some sort of veggies.
Friday with either be completely off or a very easy 20 minutes just to get moving followed by some mobility work. I always try and get to bed a little earlier and sleep more. Saturday morning is a very short run, mobility, drills and then finished with some faster pick ups.
Now its time to get my feet up as much as possible. My last big meal is normally the Saturday night and yes, you guessed it. Its rice with some veggies and a form of protein. Very simple but I know it works for me.
Sunday morning rolls around I am normally far too excited and wake up way before I need to then it’s a battle of not eating to much but still having enough. I like to try and have my last meal a good 2 hours before I need to start warming up so a 10am race start I try to eat by 7am. Might seem a long time but it works well. Toast with peanut butter is my go-to for this meal at the moment.
Finally, it’s time to warm up, this really varies depending on the length of the race, the longer the race the shorter the warm up. If we take a race of 40 minutes, I tend to jog for 20 minutes before going through my usual mobility then some drills to make sure everything is turned on and working then finish with some strides starting longer and slow then picking up and getting faster.
After the race I try to cool down normally for at least 10 minutes and then of course finishing the day off with an all-important cookie and pizza, you have got to treat yourself after a hard day right!’
I hope that you’ve found this useful. Any questions about preparation then please email us at info@ acceleraterunningcompany.co.uk and we will be more than happy to answer them for you.
