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Excitement and stress can both run high during race week. You’re away from home, surrounded by other runners, and there are endless opportunities to compare yourself. After all the work you’ve put in, the last thing you want is for something to go wrong now.

The focus this week is simple. Arrive at the start line fresh, prepared and ready to race.

You’ve already built the fitness you’ll bring to the start line. You’ll have a few taper sessions to keep the legs moving, but you’re not trying to get fitter now. You’re trying to arrive rested and ready to use the fitness you already have.

Avoid hard sessions and resist the temptation to test yourself. If you’re using Ascend, stick to your taper week and trust the plan.

Take care of everything you can control, and try not to worry about what you can’t.

Get your kit ready and make any final adjustments based on what you learned during your race simulations. Plan your nutrition and make sure you have everything you need. If you use Ascend, export your plan from the Race Planner, so you have it all mapped out.

Charge your phone and watch. Download any routes or maps you need. Check the race rules one final time. Get the small decisions out of the way now.

Plan the day from the moment you wake up to the moment you reach the start line.

How are you getting there? Do you need to make any final bookings? Where will you eat? How much time do you need? Remember that thousands of other runners may have similar plans, so leave plenty of time for traffic, queues and the unexpected.

You don’t want an unplanned 5km warm up before a 175km race.

If you have a crew, make sure everyone knows the plan. Where to be, when to be there, what to bring and what you might need from them. Spell it out and assume nothing.

This might be the biggest race of your year. You’re going to be nervous and excited, and a perfect night of sleep before the race might be difficult.

That’s okay. One poor night is less important than you might think. Focus on getting good, consistent sleep in the days leading into the race so you’re well rested before nerves and logistics start getting in the way.

The event village will be full of shiny new shoes

No more arbitrary mileage targets...

What is fitness? And how do you measure it? The “right” balance of fitness you need will vary from race to race. No two races are exactly the same. As trail runners, we must aim to build the right balance of fitness for the challenge ahead. That is all part of the game.

Blowing up is definitely going to squash your chances of performing at your best. You might feel like you’ve worked harder than ever before, but you would have run faster had you run a smoother pace throughout.

What tools might you deploy when racing to keep you honest? RPE, HR, pace, GAP, or maybe some others? Once you have some experience, checking in with the tools, rather than being dictated to by them, is best.

As trail runners, pace can usually feel less relevant, but with the bigger mountain races, the starts are often flat and non-technical, and pace is actually more relevant than you might think. Your heart rate might be high, you’re excited, and your effort feels low because you’re excited, so pace might be a good way to check in on yourself if you have any doubts... assuming your GPS is playing ball. If pace isn’t your friend, running frustratingly slow is a good guide ;)

For the reason we don’t use pace on technical terrain, heart rate is a useful measure of your effort to make sure you’re not pushing too hard... but not indefinitely. Your heart rate will drift up gradually during races but, as fatigue builds, there may come a point where it simply won’t climb any higher. This will happen at different times depending on your fitness level and the conditions. Again, it’s a good tool, but inexperience can yield the wrong feedback (i.e. “My HR is low, I must try harder”).

Rate of Perceived Exertion is still considered the best by many. When the terrain becomes so technical you just can’t move fluidly through it, it’s not a good idea to chase either pace or heart rate values. At that point, RPE becomes your best guide. When you have a few races under your belt, you can start to gauge how hard you pushed at different stages, and how that is reflected in your performance. We break down pacing in Ascend for all your workouts, so you have lots of different methods to scrutinise whether you were pushing too hard, not hard enough, or cruising just right... and develop that experience.

Descending efficiently cannot be neglected by trail runners. For most, it is less about moments of technical brilliance and more about being able to descend well for many hours.

There are two key elements. Your skill, how you tackle the terrain in front of you, and your durability, can you sustain that performance from summit to valley floor, then do it all again?

Descending is a skill and it is one you can improve. You may think you will never run downhill as fast as some people, but the reality is that in a 100 km race, even at the front of the field, the pace is generally smooth and controlled rather than spectacular. Beyond the occasional tactical move, efficiency matters more than outright speed.

You may already be a good descender, but if the conditioning is not there, you will quickly lose any advantage your technique gives you. Before long, you will find yourself in survival mode.

Downhills place a huge load on the body, so tracking the stress from faster descents is key to long term improvement. Combining Ascends Running Impact and Gradient Training Stress metrics are a great way to quantify that load and train more effectively.

Knowing if you’re “race ready” is never an easy question to answer. How do you tell if you’re ready?

We don’t all live in the mountains, and knowing if you’re spending enough time on the terrain you’ll be racing on is handy…but…you should always scale up relative to your Gradient Training Stress. You might have lots of running under your belt but those downhills are going to introduce new strains on your body. Progressive overload people. 🙂