Getting in Tune
How tune-up races can help you in your goal race
By Pete Pfitzinger, M.S.
As featured in the September 2000 issue of Running Times Magazine
To be ready for an optimal performance in an important race, you must train hard. Your training provides a variety of stimuli that improve your fitness, and gives you the confidence that comes with achieving challenging training goals. But you will find there is a big difference between being fit to run and fit to race. An additional component to racing well can only be gained by, well, racing. To prepare optimally for a goal race, you need to do several tune-up races that is, races of lesser importance that you use to help prepare for your goal race. Tune-up races serve three purposes:
Allow you to go through race preparation. This experience, no matter how many times you have had it in the past, helps reduce your anxiety before your goal race. Pre-race anxiety is caused by uncertainty. By practicing the routines of race preparation, they become familiar and therefore less likely to provoke anxiety. You learn (or, in most case, relearn) subtle lessons, such as how to warm up properly, pre-race stretching, what to eat the night before and morning of a race, and when to report to the start.
Toughen you mentally and physically more than a workout can. Even the toughest interval session is not as tough, mentally or physically, as a race because there is less at stake. In a race, competing against others, there is a narrower margin between success and failure. In addition, you are or should be committed to finishing, whether you are having a good day or a lousy day. In a workout, you can always stop early if you feel terrible or are performing poorly, with your pride relatively intact.
The all-out aspect of racing provides a physical challenge and mental hardening that you need to run to your potential. When you are at your limit in your goal race, wondering whether you can hang on (and you still have several miles to go), it helps to have been through similar situations in tune-up races.
Provide feedback on your current fitness level. Your results in tune-up races provide feedback on the effectiveness of your training program. The closer the distance of the tune-up race to your goal race, the better indication you will get of your fitness for your goal race.