It’s time to see how your running held up over the Winter months – enter a race to benchmark your performance.
There are lots of ways to test your fitness, but some runners just love the motivating atmosphere of a race. If that’s you, read on to discover the best ways to use races to test your running fitness (and what to do with the data!)
How to test your Winter fitness
Benchmark sessions are a familiar part of any runner’s routine. But it’s not often you’ll actually enter a race as a way to measure fitness. After all, races are usually the pinnacle of your training programme, not a stepping stone.
Races are a fantastic way to measure where you’re at in terms of speed, pace, leg and lung fitness. Plenty of experts will recommend 5 x 1000m or 10K at 80% as a fitness test. Why not do that in a race setting?
3 pitfalls to avoid
– getting caught up in the atmosphere. Races are addictive, so don’t get so caught up in vibe that you go off too fast or start racing the guy in front of you. Stick to your plan.
– pushing yourself too hard. Remember why you’re doing this race – to benchmark your performance. Treat it like a training run (with 100s of other people around…)
– changing your goal last minute. Go in with a clear goal, whether that’s to run a steady pace, a negative split, or even kilometres.
The benefits of entering 5K races
Running a test 5K is a great way to blow the cobwebs away and see how your pace has held up over Winter. Just don’t go out too fast or try to race anyone. Stick to your plan, know what pace you want to hit, and don’t get distracted.
Use the data from your 5K to assess your current 5K pace (really useful for % work in training) and get honest about how it felt to run at that intensity.
The benefits of entering 10K races
Most of us will head out for a 10K at least once a week, and testing your fitness with a 10K race is a great way to benchmark your regular tempo running pace. It’s also a fantastic start point for half marathon or marathon training.
Use the data from your 10K race to identify your mid-intensity pace, and to see where you currently start to fatigue over runs of 40+ minutes.
Using a half marathon to test your fitness
Not many people would jump right in to a half marathon as a way to test fitness, but it could work. If you’ve regularly been running 30+ miles a week, with a 90+ minute long run at least every fortnight, a half marathon could give you some useful feedback.
The most useful feedback from a test half marathon is mental. How did you feel? At what point did you start to fatigue, and what strategies did you use to counteract that? Can you hold a steady pace for 13.1 or do you need to work on your base fitness with regular long runs?
Windsor Half Marathon Sunday 29th September Click here to enter today