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Today I wanted to discuss my latest tuneup race, the Asheville Spartan Super.
Not your typical tune up race.
Let’s jump in!
What is a Tune Up Race?
I know I’ve talked about these before, but we’ll dive into the topic again real quick.
A tune up race is a great opportunity to test.
These are races you put on your calendar around 4 weeks out from your actual race.
They can test a lot of things, but the biggest ones for me are:
Race fitness
Race day strategies
Now, it’s important to note that a tune up race is almost never the distance of your actual race. You don’t tune up for a marathon with another marathon. You typically race a half marathon or 10K.
The only exception here could be tuning up for a 5K race with a 10K. But that’s only because a 5K is right on the cusp of intensity and endurance. Anything shorter than a 5K doesn’t really include the endurance component and just ramps up the intensity too much.
So for most race distances the tune up race is a chance to push hard and see where your fitness and endurance are. There are calculators out there that can tell you exactly how hard you should push in these other distances depending on your goal race.
For example, this popular calculator: https://vdoto2.com/
If I punch into that calculator that I want to run a 3 hour marathon, it tells me that the equivalent half marathon would be 1:26, or the equivalent 10K would be 39 minutes.
The idea is that if you can hit these shorter distances at a much more intense pace, then you are ready for the longer race you are training for.
The other thing tuneup races allow you to test (and more important in my opinion) is race day strategies.
What I mean by this is how will your morning look? How many hours before race time are you waking up, what are you eating before the race, what kind of gels/nutrition are you bringing on course, what kind of warmup do you want to do, etc?
There are tons of opinions on all of these things out there on the internet, but I’m a firm believer that we are all built different and so what works for me won’t necessarily work for you.
But it’s important to practice these things during training. The one piece of advice that rings true for anyone and everyone is that it is incredibly risky to try something new on race day. Whether it’s a brand new pair of shoes or a new gel nutrition strategy. Things can go poorly very quickly.
A tune up race, however, is the perfect time to experiment. Because if the race doesn’t go well, that’s ok!
This race gives you the perfect opportunity to try out your full strategy and put it to the test with real race day nerves, crowds, corrals, etc.
So…with that, let’s jump into my race day morning.
Race Morning
One big thing I’m always tweaking is nutrition. I’m going to do a day of eating video soon, but for now I’ll just say I’ve been trying to lean more into this animal based diet idea.
An animal based diet, in spite of it’s name, is really more similar to the Whole 30 diet in my opinion. You eat meat, fruit, honey, and dairy. So the main difference between that and Whole 30 is it swaps vegetables for dairy.
So more cheese, less broccoli. Who would complain about that?
That being said, some vegetables have great sources of starchy carbs, which are important. And as such I do stick to eating potatoes. Beyond that, the true goal of this nutrition style is to avoid processed junk and anything that upsets your stomach or doesn’t sit well like a lot of grains can do.
This isn’t my nutrition episode so I’ll stop there.
I say all of that to preface with my breakfast strategy. My goal before the race is to start consuming carbs around 3 hours before the race. For me, the race started at 7:15 so ideally I should eat my first meal around 4:15.
In reality I pushed that to 4:45.
For breakfast I had some good hydration with a Hydrogen Tab and a ¼ teaspoon of salt. Then I followed that with a glass of milk and honey for good carbs, and an entire mango, which gave me more quick digesting carbs.
Before we left, I had a scoop of G1M sport, which contained even more carbs and electrolytes.
Finally, about 45 minutes from the race start I had a scoop of G1M sport +...the + is for caffeine and nootropics. I mainly feel the caffeine and get fired up and ready to rip!
We left on time, but the venue is like 1 hour and 30 minutes away and there just happened to be traffic along the route. On top of that, they changed the parking from last year to include a nice 10 minute walk.
All that to say, time was crunched a bit and I didn’t really have time for my full warmup.
I was able to do a few dynamic movements and jog a bit, but my heart rate wasn’t high at all. That’s for sure.
But before I knew it, my corral was being called and so it was time to race!
It just goes to show, you may not be able to hit your full routine and that’s ok. Your routine will not make or break the race. The weeks of training prior is what does that.
I suppose one additional plus was I didn’t have time to deal with any pre-race nerves.
The Race
Now a Spartan obstacle course race is really not an ideal tune up race for a marathon. As I said before, my online calculator tells me that for a 3 hour marathon, I should complete a 10K in 39 minutes.
The calculator, however, does not a way to input the terrain, elevation, and obstacles that are in a Spartan race.
Therefore, I took a new approach. I decided not to care about time.
I was just going to race my hardest, hit the obstacles well, and have a good time.
And it did wonders!
I actually finished the race 4 minutes faster than last year with a time of 1:23. I was only 10th in my age group, but it was a great time!
The race itself actually felt easy. Especially coming off of the Spartan Beast in June and being deep in the trenches of marathon training.
The amount of hills I walked up were pretty small compared to the Beast or even this same race last year. In fact, I only walked up some of the hills because I knew harder obstacles were up ahead and wanted to conserve energy.
The weather also helped. It was overcast, a little misty, but no sun exposure and the temps were perfect! Like right in the 50s/60s. Absolutely beautiful!
I did fail some obstacles I knew I should get. My one complaint with Spartan is you can’t retry obstacles. So since this was my 4th Spartan race, this was only my 4th time trying some of these obstacles.
But all in all, it was a great race and I attribute a lot of that to the lack of pressure over a time goal.
What I’m Taking Away
This leads me to my biggest take away, which is that sometimes taking pressure and expectations away can make the outcome even better.
I decided that since this was a tune up race and I couldn’t do a full translation for a time test, I would just race this my hardest and see what happens.
The mental outcome was great! I wasn’t stressed or pushing at certain paces. It felt more like racing than a time trial. I would see someone in front of me and concern myself more with “can I overtake this guy” rather than “am I hitting the right pace.”
This mentality is something I want to carry forward with me too. I will still have time goals, but I think I’m ok with stretching them out.
This is why I started this series as Breaking 2:55. I want to break that time goal eventually, but it’s not because I have the goal of breaking 2:55 in my next race.
And because of that, my next race’s time doesn’t really matter. As I’ve said before, my main goal is to PR. So anywhere below 3:18 is a win for me. It doesn’t have to even break 3. Just a small increment step towards 2:55 each race and I’ll eventually hit that big goal.
It’s like our parents always said: “how do you eat an elephant?”
“One bite at a time.”
Our culture has been overrun with speed and quickness. Get rich quick schemes are rampant and never work. Most of the time it’s just someone getting rich off your greed for quickness.
We see get “fit” quick schemes too in the face of fad diets that are not sustainable. Or any kind of weird workout device that says you can get a 6-pack in 10 minutes a day without ever doing an exercise.
The reality in all of these things is they actually take time. Years of consistent investing is how the majority build wealth. Years of diligent training and not overconsuming is how you get fit.
And so, I want to take that mentality everywhere I go. I don’t want to be in a hurry to achieve my goals all the time.
After all, the main joy we get in a goal is not the achievement, but the journey to it. Once you achieve it, you will be onto the next big goal.
So enjoy the journey.
And as always, run with joy!