Setting Goals for Race Day
Daily Tip #12
With the race just two days away, it’s time to take a moment to sit down and think about what you’re really capable of achieving on Sunday, and how you plan to do it.
You may think that race-day goal-setting is only important if you’re aiming for a particular finish time, pace per mile, or age-group or overall placing. Not so. Setting a goal is important for every runner, from first-time racers to those aiming for the overall win. Setting goals not only provides focus and motivation, it also can make the race-day experience more enjoyable by creating a framework for all the physical and mental effort you will be expending.
Make no mistake: Sunday will be a taxing day. The biggest challenge, of course, will be running 13.1 miles through New York City streets to the best of your ability on what is forecast to be a hot, steamy summer morning. But there will be other challenges as well—logistical, psychological, nutritional, and more.
Many runners set goals related to their finish time or pace per mile. For example, you may set a goal of breaking two hours in the NYC Half, or a goal of averaging 10 minutes per mile. This type of goal-setting can help you establish a pace in the early miles and can motivate you to keep pushing during the tough final miles.
Make sure that your finish-time or pace-per-mile goals are realistic, based on your current fitness and training. For example, if your goal is to average 10-minute-per-mile pace for the race’s 13.1 miles, this should be a pace you’ve been able to hold consistently on training runs and in recent races. Setting an unrealistic time or pace goal can sabotage your race by encouraging you to start the race too quickly or to push too hard in the middle miles. This can result in your struggling during the final miles of the race because you’ve depleted your energy stores or exhausted your muscles.
Even a realistic time or pace goal can fail to serve your best interests if race-day conditions are not ideal. The warm, humid weather forecast for Sunday may be a reason to adjust your planned per-mile pace or finish time. Pushing too hard in hot conditions can lead to dangerous overheating of the body.
It can help to set a range of race-day pace and finish-time goals. Try setting three goals: acceptable, challenging, and ultimate. Your acceptable goal might be to finish without walking, your challenging goal could be to finish at 10-minute-per-mile pace (2:11:06 finish time), and your ultimate “dream” goal could be to finish in two hours (about 9:09 pace). Setting a range of goals will help keep you focused and motivated even if you’re not having a great race. It can be demoralizing to realize that you’re not going to have the race of your dreams, and some runners lose focus and mentally give up when confronted with that reality. If you can shift to a lesser but still acceptable goal, you can stay in the race mentally and may well pull out a better result than if you simply threw in the towel.
You may also want to expand your definition of “goals” to include logistical, psychological, nutritional, and other goals as well. For example, set a goal of giving yourself plenty of time on Sunday morning to check your bag by 6:00 a.m. as required and be in your assigned start corral by 6:15. Set another goal of thinking positive thoughts when the going gets tough in the race’s final three miles (read Tip #11 [LINK] for strategies on maintaining an upbeat attitude). Set a goal of fueling and hydrating adequately before, during, and after the race so that you run to your potential and recover well.
Your most important race-day goal is one that is sometimes overlooked: Have fun. You’ve invested a lot in this race, and the payoff is almost here. You’ll want to savor every minute.
