Preparing For Your First Race

Your first race can be a daunting task: even the pro’s sweat over a race they’ve trained for a million times. Racing is the scariest part of running, cycling or any other sport. People are watching you, and putting pressure on you to perform. Well that’s how it feels. The reality is people aren’t looking at you; they’re looking at the race and cheering everyone. This feeling can be detrimental to performance, and make you feel bad about racing. Best thing is to chill out and follow the tips below to help you enjoy your race as much as possible.

The first step is preparation. The 5 P’s: proper preparation prevents poor performance. This means that the night before have all your running gear laid out so you know what you’re wearing and don’t forget anything.

On the morning of the race, have a good breakfast and hydrate properly. Don’t think too much about the day ahead: it’s just another training run! If you’ve trained enough you have nothing to worry about.

Use the equipment and food you’ve used in training. Changing anything on race day without experimenting with it in training is never done by the professionals. If you don’t know how it will react with your body you shouldn’t use it during a race, ever!

When running, don’t let faster, better equipped runners intimidate you and put you off. There will always be someone faster than you at some race, so run your own race at your own pace and don’t let someone else command your pace.

Just try and finish: don’t go 110% on the last 100 metres unless you have the chance to win. Walk if you want, especially at water stations.

Remember, you entered the race so enjoy it. Recover properly afterwards and everything will go fine.