Picking the Best Tune Up Races (and Executing Them)

Audio Transcript

Fisher: Hello everyone, this is Coach Fisher from Runners Connect.

Today’s question comes from Mari.

She asks, “What distance should tune up races be, and how should you pace yourself in a tune up race when preparing to run a marathon?”

The second part is, “Should I run as fast as possible or should it be a tempo?”

These are all great questions.

A lot of people ask this question on Runners Connect. What kind of tune ups, when they should be placed and how they should be raced.

More importantly, how they set you up for a marathon.

In my opinion, I think you can race the shorter distance race is 5Ks and 10Ks, really whenever you want to put them in the training schedule and pin it on some things.

What you don’t want to do is put in too many races where it takes out or doesn’t allow you the time to do some of the key workouts for the marathon.

You don’t want to miss a key long run to go race a local 5K. You don’t want to do that several weeks in a row, or a lot in those final 8 to 10 to 12 weeks leading up to the marathon.

I always like to look at the whole training plan and start with the first couple of weeks. The first couple of months of your training cycle, put in some 5Ks and 10Ks.

Both races are short enough to where they’re not going to disrupt training afterwards where you need to recover for four or five days.

You might need to recover for a day or two or three, and then you get right back into your workouts, preparing you for the marathon.

I see 5Ks and 10Ks also as another way to sneak in a little bit of leg speed and a little bit of speed work, so to speak, into your training cycle.

Marathon training is all about long tempos, long runs and all the slower workouts, so it’s good to get those 5Ks in and continue to develop, and maintain the speed work side of things.

I like to put in a hand full of 5Ks in my training within the first two or three months.

Once I hit the last 8 or 10 weeks in marathon build, I don’t race any more unless it’s a half marathon which we’ll get into here in a minute.

Another benefit of racing 5Ks and 10Ks is that it’s a different kind of herd. You run in the middle of a marathon training cycle, and the distance and the duration of your runs is what fatigues you.

In a 5K, you’re just red lining the whole way, so it’s another way to become comfortable being uncomfortable, in a different kind of a pain tolerance.

It helps a lot with a lot of mental strength as well, going into the half marathon and you target race the marathon.

For a longer race, like a half marathon, I wouldn’t recommend putting in any more than one or two.

If you want to race a half marathon to try and set a fast time or PR in the half marathon itself, I would recommend trying to find one, six to 10 weeks out from your target marathon.

This gives you enough time to recover and still hit all those big long runs, but its close enough to where you can see how you adapted to training load so far, and it helps you dial in any more realistic goal pace into the marathon, even though the half marathon’s only half the distance of a marathon.

It’s about as close as you can get race wise to predicting a more realistic target goal pace for the marathon.

It allows you to adjust your workouts going forward on what goal marathon pace is.

I know a lot of people like to race some eight to 10 weeks out, and a lot of people like to jump into half marathon three or four weeks out, even five weeks out and not race the half marathon, but run 13.1 miles at goal marathon pace, and they kind of talk with the coach about how easy that felt.

Marathon pace should feel relatively easy even if you do go 13 miles, if it’s a pace that you realistically could hold for 26.2.

That’s another great opportunity to once again run 13 miles at goal race pace, but also you can simulate what your plan is and what your nutrition is, the 48 hours leading up to the race: your carbo-loading, your hydration, your gear setup, what shoes you’re going to wear, what racing kit you’re going to wear, your fuelling plan, your breakfast, all those things can tie into that half marathon.

It’s basically a mock run of the marathon itself. It gives you opportunity to experiment things as well in that half marathon.

Again, I would do that for four weeks out, roughly a month out, a good last race to prepare for things before the big day.

I hope that answers your question.

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