The last week before a race and how to pace the race

On Sunday I'm running Běchovice–Prague, the oldest road running race in Europe and also the Czech championship over ten kilometres. A week out, you can no longer train your fitness up, but rest will bring it to the surface. What you can also still improve is how you run the race.

A 10K at Vaše liga, the seventh kilometre

The last week

Cut the volume, not the intensity. Take the kilometres down by about half, but keep the pace. Short efforts at race pace remind your body what you'll want from it on Sunday, without wearing it out.

I put my last harder session three days before the start. The day before, I only do easy jogging and a few strides, so my legs don't go flat.

In my experience, sleep does more than any extra training. For me, what counts are the two nights before the race, because the last one tends to be short and restless.

I try nothing new with food. On race morning I eat what I have tried in training, with the same gap before the start.

Race morning

Warm up to the length of the race. For a 10K, fifteen minutes of easy jogging and three or four strides. No stretching to fatigue, no five kilometres before the start.

Expect the start to be crowded. The first two hundred metres go as they go. In my view, overtaking in a crowd costs you more than it gains. Those few seconds melt away over the following kilometres.

How to pace those ten kilometres

Don't run the first kilometre faster than your target pace. The crowd and the adrenaline carry almost everyone away, and in my experience you pay for it at the end. A few seconds slower does no harm, but don't drag it out over two whole kilometres.

From there to the seventh, hold your target pace. It's the boring part, and the one where you can spoil the most.

Speed up from the eighth. A few seconds per kilometre are enough. I take a fastest last kilometre as a sign that the pacing worked. In my 10K on 16 September the last kilometre came out at 3:58 against an average of 4:04, the fastest of the whole race.

Treat your heart rate as a guide, not an instruction. At the start it's raised by nerves. A watch on your wrist measures less accurately than a chest strap when you run fast, so use the heart rate it shows to control your pace only as a rough guide.

What one race tells you and what it does not

At the start of September I ran a 10K in 41:05, eleven days later in 40:47. My running volume stayed the same. What was added between the races was strength work and core exercises.

My heart rate was similar in both, around 145. I measure it with a watch on my wrist, not with a chest strap, and a difference of a few beats is more likely a measuring error than news about my fitness. That isn't enough to base decisions on.

One race doesn't tell you much about your fitness. It's more useful to know how you felt at the eighth kilometre and whether you had something left at the end.

I wrote about the first of those two races, which came after three weeks without running, in the article Three weeks without running and the fastest kilometre at the very end.

After the race

Race pace is best rehearsed in training, for me on Saturday at the group running session. Write down the pace you want to hold before the start, and compare it with reality once you finish. That single line tells you more about your training than the results list.

I'll see you at Běchovice on Sunday. If you're running it too, get in touch.

Added after the race: how Běchovice went is in my article The oldest running race in Europe and a Saturday morning on Argentinská.

Sources: Bosquet, Montpetit, Arvisais, Mujika (2007), Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Mujika, Padilla (2003), Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Juliff, Halson, Peiffer (2015), Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. Behm, Blazevich, Kay, McHugh (2016), Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. Ramos-Campo et al. (2025), Sports Medicine. Pasadyn et al. (2019), Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy.