Race Prep - What's the secret

Most of the people I coach are at some stage going to do a race. Their level of training and commitment to the sport may vary widely but when the race starts getting closer they all end up asking for some advice around their race prep. For 90% of these guys my advice is the same so I thought I'd write it down here.

Now these are meant to be 5min reads so I'll stick to the big points/principles.

Number 1 - Don't change anything

Now this doesn't mean train hard right up to the event and if you normally paddle Saturday morning do that before the race anyway... What I mean by this is whatever you can, do as you usually do.

If you normally paddle everyday, don't take 3 days off the water in the lead up.

If you normally go to bed at 10, don't go to sleep at 8 to get more sleep

If you normally eat salad and steak for dinner don't go loading up on 1kg of pasta to "carbo load".

The list can go on but the principle is the same. Your body gets used to what you usually do and when we go and make a big change it usually doesn't like it.

3 days of no exercise will probably leave you feeling flat, going to bed really early will probably just mean you wake up too early or oversleep and the carbo loading usually just leaves most punters with a sore stomach and a bad nights sleep.

Hopefully it sounds obvious, but, don't go training for something for months and then change everything in the last few days... your body won't like it. Keep doing what you're doing and make changes like the length of training sessions. Turn your hour session into 45min and you will feel like you have plenty in the tank.

Stick to your routines, eat like you usually would, sleep like you usually do and you'll probably feel pretty good.

The other big one is nutrition and hydration. Everyone wants the super food or fluid that's going to stop them from getting tired and the biggest advice I can give you is that you should never try anything out on race day.

Similar to the above, your body won't be used to it. If you've never had a gel, an hour into a race is a really bad time to try one. If you're going to experiment with your nutrition (which I think you should) then the time to do so is in training. Work out what works for you and your stomach. Cramps are the last thing you need when you were looking for a pick me up and just like you are training you muscles, you need to train your stomach to take on food/fluid when you are exercising.

Everyone will tell you what they use and how good it is but you should soon realise a lot of people are telling you different things. Which makes sense, they're all different. So take your gels/bananas/lollies to training. Wear your bladder in your PFD and try your different fluids while you're at training and it doesn't really matter if it doesn't sit well.

Then when you turn up to race day there will be two more things that you have control over and can keep the same.

Keeping things the same also feeds into what I think is the biggest factor and that's the mental aspect of turning up to a race. Things are stressful when they're different. Physically and emotionally. So keep in control of the things you can, don't start making changes because its a race. Routines are good, they got you this far.