Remember to plan for Round the Bays

With the Ports of Auckland Round the Bays fast approaching on March 5, fitness instructor Johnathan Tait, from Glenfield Leisure, offers his tips for race day.

1. Put your best foot forward

You have put in the hard work training in the lead-up to the event and you owe it to yourself to perform to the best of your abilities. In order to do this, I would recommend making sure you are well hydrated, well fed and well rested. Have a decent meal the night before as well as about 2-3 hours before the event. This ensures our bodies have the necessary fuel to perform at our best. Dehy- dration is detrimental to performance and trying to combat this on the move can be pretty hard for some, so I would recommend upping your water intake for a couple days prior to the event.

2. Have a race plan

For more seasoned competitors, this will probably be a bit more complex; however, even as a novice, having a race plan is essential. For example: if in training you had run 7 kilometres of mixed terrain (some hills) in a time of 42 minutes, your average pace would be 6 minutes a kilometre. Although the RTB course is longer than this, it is flat. So, I would suggest running the first 5km of the race at this pace and then assessing how you feel and either staying the same pace and holding on to the end or, if you are feeling good, pick up the pace a little to somewhere around 5.5km.

3. Warm up

Our muscles are a lot like a stick of chewing gum, if you take it straight out of the packet and try and stretch it, it will just rip and tear. Similarly with us, if we aren’t nice and warm, our body doesn’t perform optimally or in the way we would like it to. Good things to do before running include high knees, bodyweight squats, body-weight lunges, arm circles, and some easy jogging where we can increase the pace over time. The idea here is to get warm, not to tire yourself out. So keep that in mind.

4. Keep moving forward You don’t have the be the fastest person to finish but to finish you do have to keep moving. Although during the event we can feel sore, tired, out of breath, these pale in comparison to the feeling you get when you complete a challenge.

5. Have fun

FELICITY REID Round the Bays Running Club trainer Johnathan Tait from Glenfield Pool and Leisure Centre.