Running Your Race: Avoiding No Man's Land

Many new runners show up to a race, regardless of the distance, without a plan. In fact, the shorter the race is, the less likely someone is to have a plan!

When the opposite should be the case. Shorter races require more thought-out race plans—time becomes very precious! Whereas in the marathon distance, time can be bended and played around with more freely. Adjusting on the fly depending on how you feel occurs a lot in the longer distance races, time is made up much more easily here.

In the example of racing a 5K, if you’re at race pace and it feels “easy” by mile 2, you do not have much time to makeup for, you may have “wasted” and effort. I use the word “wasted” sparingly because it is hard to waste a race, you usually learn something (like planning it out better!).

I’ve even see people lose half marathon PRs just because they went into a race without a plan, hoping to “feel” it out or run with a group. Both of these can leave you on an island and in no man’s land—a sad and desolate place to be.

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First off, not finding your race pace for your desired distance before the race actually starts is where people make the first mistake.

The shorter the race is, the harder it is to “feel” out the pace. For anything under a half marathon, you need close to exact splits for every mile/km you run—at least for the early splits. If you crash and burn from your plan, you know you went out too fast. If you have energy to push later into the race, then you might’ve went out too conservatively—although this is not a bad thing and many people are naturally “negative split” runners.

Your race pace should always be derived from your training log with a self-aware point of view. This is why race simulations, tempo runs, and long run workouts are all important as a runner. *Not* just running at one pace for every single run.

Many new runners fall into what I described in my last sentence. They run every single mile at their comfortably moderate pace—say around 10 minutes a mile—then come race day they end up racing right at that pace too! Their body knows nothing else, and they made no adaptation during training to change this, along with having zero data to know if they can run sustainably at a faster pace. This is why 4 hours and 21 minutes (10:00 min/miles) is the average marathon finish time.

Running at race pace should not be something you do very frequently in training, as it should drain your energy levels slightly more than your normal running. But when you do run at your desired race pace, it should feel strong and smooth, not overly stressful. As a guide for the marathon, newer runner’s race paces are usually ~60 seconds faster than their normal easy runs. so if your stacking up a lot of easy volume around 10:30 min/mile, 9:30min/mile is a good place to start when trying to find a marathon race pace.

In lack of having race data at shorter distances, you can use your proposed (or real) marathon pace to estimate your race pace at shorter distances.

This is not perfect by any means, but it is a solid starting place. To actually know your race paces, you will need to sign up for some local 5K and live test it yourself. This will inevitably lead to a few failures which is good and the exact point. The goal is to find new information about your physiology as a runner. Remember, you’re training with the body you have now, not the pace you want to run in the future.

As for the pace you want to run in the future, this is where tempo and threshold training comes into play. Using this chart for the *time* you would like to run in a certain distance, you can derive a pace and therefore a threshold pace to aspire to.

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Back to race day.

Now that you generally know how to plan your race pace—any further clarification needed please reach out—it’s time to execute.

Avoiding No Man’s Land

Almost every new runner makes this mistake.

They plan to “feel” their first race out and “go with the flow” throughout the race. This only works if you plan on feeling good (zone 2) the entire time and your goal is to just finish the race.

This idea falls apart when you wade into the deep end of the pool and aim for a specific time goal, and you enter the proverbial pain cave late into a race.

So what’s the difference?

Always have a pacer. This can be a designated pacing group that is provided by the race itself, a friend, or your running watch. As long as you have one of these *and* a plan, you will feel more comfortable-notably your cortisol will be lower (worrying if you’re running at the right pace, when the finish is etc.).

When you don’t have any kind of pacing mechanism, you tend to find the nearest person or group and bunch up with them. Again, this work to a point. You start to run in lock step and match stride + pace with your spur-of-the-moment pacers.

But when those pacers start running faster than you want—or slower—they no longer become viable pacing partners. Eventually, you will find yourself in “no man’s land”, the space between groups of runners. You never want to be in no man’s land without a plan.

You either:

1. Have a pre-planned pace plan (following your watch)

2. Speed up and catch the group in front of you

3. Slow down and run with the group behind you

If you find yourself alone, but feeling good and hitting your desired splits, this is *not* no man’s land—this is your land.

This is especially important in races where there is a "kick” (people start running faster), ie the 5K, 10K. The guy you’ve been running next to since the start of the race might not be there to lean on the next time you look to your right. He might have gapped you and left you for dead in no man’s land.

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Bottom line, go into your races with a self-aware plan built off of reliable training data.

Reliable data: Run more short races! You can use these as “training races” which would colloquially be labeled as B and C races. The first goal of many new runners is to run a marathon. This is great, but if you were to race a 5K and 10K inside of your marathon training plan, you would understand your abilities much better and have a more accurate picture of what your race pace will be.

You also get a sense of what racing is like, and to avoid no man’s land when you get to your A race.

Plan: TEST TEST TEST. On your long runs, incorporate running your planned race pace for a few miles deep into your runs.

For example (race pace = marathon pace here):

15 mile long run:

5 Easy

3 Tempo/Race Pace

2 Easy

3 Tempo/Race Pace

2 Easy

These can be played around with, but the point is you are not running the entire long run at race pace, and therefore gassing yourself before race day.

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Happy Sunday!

-BTR

As always I offer 1:1 coaching, hit me up if you plan on racing more in 2025.