How to PR your next race (Part 1)

If you are interested in running a personal record for your next race, then this email is for you.

I will do my best to make this guide applicable for any race distance. The principles remain the same.

Also, because I don’t want to leave anything out, I’m breaking up this guide into two parts.

But before the guide...If you're interested in getting into measuring all of your health habits, I highly recommend Whoop. Whoop is a continuous heart rate monitor, fitness tracker, and recovery coach. This is not a sponsored post (maybe one day it will be), but just a genuine endorsement from me. Get a free WHOOP 4.0 and one month free when you join with this link.

Okay, let’s get right to it.

Ask yourself…are you ready?

When training for a race, especially with the intentions of running a PR, you have to ask yourself this question.

This is because for the next 3-6 months your entire life will be consumed with your race goal. This means that you have to look ahead to make sure your life can accommodate the focus and time needed to train.

For example, do you have any upcoming big trips or events? Will this be your “busy” season at work?

This does not mean you can’t have success training, but you have to take all of this into account when planning your training runs and recovery.

This also means that you may have to make some sacrifices and changes to your typical lifestyle. I’ll talk about recovery in a little bit, but late nights out on the weekends will have to be put on hold.

Just recently, I knew that training for my 10k race in July would be complicated with the sleep training of my young daughter. There were many nights with really poor sleep quality for all of us involved. There were a few weeks where I only ran once a week. This all led to less than ideal conditions for training. I adjusted my race expectations and training expectations accordingly.

Had I given myself an extra 4 weeks of training time , I could’ve absorbed the disruption. This leads me to my next principle.

Give yourself plenty of time

The longer your race distance, the longer training time would be ideal. 5k race? Minimum 3 months. 10k or longer? 4-6 months.

Depending on your other life obligations, you may want to add in another 2-4 weeks for some wiggle room.

There is an increased risk of injury when you build up training volume too quickly. This is especially true when you increase training volume fast in a very short amount of time. You should never feel the rush to get in all the mileage now. The build up in training volume should be progressive, never rushed.

Allowing yourself enough time for training will also give you room for the next principle.

Recovery efforts are key

Ignoring your recovery efforts is one of the easiest ways to go into an overtraining status. Overtraining leads to increased cortisol levels in the body, a stress hormone signaling to your body to rest. You could lose your enthusiasm to train, feel persistent fatigue and soreness, or experience poor sleep quality. This is a rough cycle to be in. You want to avoid overtraining at all costs.

When you’re training to run to a new level of performance, you cannot overlook the importance of your recoveries from training. I would argue that your body makes the true adaptations during your recovery actions.

If you’re like me, working about 40 hours a week, your training exists on top of your day job demands. And if you’re working a desk job, you can’t ignore the fact that there still is stress, mentally, physically, or both.

So if you’ve given yourself enough time for your training, this gives you ample amount of time during your week for recovery. The key element in recovery is sleep.

Let's take a look a typical day. There are about 8 hours of actual work demands. Add in 1 to 1.5 hours of commuting time. Add in another 2 hours of training. This all adds up to about 11-12 hours of time, not including all the other to-do items during the day. Often times, sleep is the last priority, but I’m telling you now that to succeed in your plan to PR, sleep needs to be your first.

This goes back to my first principle to ask yourself if you are ready. Your lifestyle will have to change.

Complimentary to getting high quality sleep are eating a healthy diet and managing stress levels daily.

I’ll leave more diet details for part two of this guide, but a healthy diet can aid in your recovery. Getting enough high quality protein for your muscles and foods that promote a distance runner’s metabolism will be needed as you train.

Managing stress levels can be a bit complex. For training, I simplify this down to doing behaviors that stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is responsible for lowering heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. In other words, this system chills you out. Examples on how to activate the parasympathetic nervous system include meditation, deep breathing exercises, prayer, or light walks in nature.

That's part one for this guide. Thank you for reading.

If you found this helpful, please share with your friends and family. Let's get more people running and living healthier lives.

And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask! Just reply back to this email. I read all the emails and answer every question.

Next week I'll share part two.

Happy running out there!

Ryan