You’ve pushed your tired legs through long runs, hit the track for speed workouts until your shoes were soaked with sweat and recorded enough miles to put your car to shame. With just a week to go until your big race, all the hard work is done, right? Well, yes and no.
While most of the hardest physical work is in the bag, ensuring success on race day still requires special attention. Your training in the final week needs to be a delicate balance of maintaining fitness while promoting recovery.
That’s why race-week workouts are so important. They help you maintain fitness, recover properly and prepare your legs, heart and lungs for optimal performance.
The following are 3 of the most important reasons not to neglect race-week workouts, plus a step-by-step guide to help you get your final preparations right:
1. Race-week workouts keep you loose and flexible.
Running easy helps improve blood flow to the muscles, allowing them to loosen up and delivering the nutrients and oxygen they will need for more intense running.
For shorter races like the 5K and 10K, being loose and flexible will help your stride feel more natural on race day. For longer races like the half marathon and marathon, easy running will help your muscles store extra glycogen (energy), which will keep you running longer.
The bulk of your race-week runs should be easy because they are the best way to ensure not only that your legs are sharp come race day, but also that your energy stores are maximized.
From my own coaching and running experience, I have found that those who skip race-week easy days struggle with being ready to run on race day. Athletes who haven’t run the day before the race can feel tight and as though they aren’t warmed up and ready to race.
2. Race-week workouts stimulate the neuromuscular system.
During race week, you will typically have one shorter, faster workout in addition to easy runs. This workout is designed to stimulate the neuromuscular system, the communication vehicle between your brain and muscles.
A boost of “fitness” to the neuromuscular system allows your brain to increase the speed at which it sends signals to the muscles and, more importantly, allows your body to activate a greater percentage of muscle fibers and fire them more forcefully.
The nervous system responds quickly to new stimuli because the growth and recovery cycle is very short. In fact, you can make small improvements to your neuromuscular coordination in less than a day. Conversely, degradation of the neuromuscular system can occur in a day or two. This means if you skip your race-week workouts, your neuromuscular system won’t perform at its optimal level.
3. Race-week workouts improve your chances of racing well.
The most common reason runners neglect race-week workouts is that they fear running the days before the race will make them tired.
Totally understandable, but completely untrue.
Simply speaking, if you have put in the training leading up to race day, short runs and an easy workout in the days before will not tire you out or negatively impact your performance in any way. In fact, it will greatly improve your chances of running well.
It doesn’t matter what race distance you’re training for: a short, easy run that is 50% or less of your normal easy-run mileage is nothing more than a shakeout jog for your body.
Try to think of it this way … if your normal recovery runs during the hardest portion of your training cycle have enabled you to recover adequately between hard workouts, what would change in the days leading up to your race?
Nothing changes.
The run doesn’t tire you out and only serves to prepare your legs, body and mind to perform optimally the following day.
How to Structure Your Race-Week Workouts
Now that you know how important race-week workouts are, what should your training actually look like? If you’re planning to run any distance between a 5K and half marathon, you can use the sample race-week schedule below. If you’re running a marathon, simply change the Tuesday effort to 3 miles run at marathon race pace; everything else can stay the same. Here’s an example schedule using percentages of your normal weekly mileage:
