Help me prepare for a foot race!

January 24, 2007 5:24 AM

Help me tackle an 8 mile foot race one month from today with an elevation gain of nearly 1000 ft.

I am an active 22 year old but my time in the gym has been very limited lately and I rarely run anymore.

I have a job were I am on my feet for about 8 hours everyday - was very active over the last 5 years up until I moved to LA and now the Virgin islands (about a year and a half between the two places) and I want to run "8 Tuff Miles" http://www.8tuffmiles.com/ on feb 24th. It gains 1000 ft in the first 6 miles and is mostly down hill from there!

How can I get in respectable shape to tackle this race? I work two jobs (a part time and a full time) so I can't spend hours a day.

Mostly I dont want to get hurt. Help me plan my course of attack! Cheers

posted by crewshell to sports, hobbies, & recreation (2 comments total)

You should get to the point that you're doing 5mi or daily, then take a couple days off before the race. If you've got hills nearby to practice on, great; if you can get to some stadium stairs, even better.

As far as getting yourself to be able to run 5mi/daily, run 3-4 mi today (if you can). Give yourself a couple days off to recover, then do it again. Now start shortening up the recovery time.
posted by notsnot at 7:15 AM on January 24, 2007

Also, a thousand feet of climbing over 6 miles is entirely runnable. Depending on the person and fitness level, 500-1000 ft/mile is generally runnable so long as you've done a bit of training uphill.

I might worry as much about the downhill. If you're running to race (as opposed to just finish), keep in mind that 2 miles at 500 feet/mile could eat up your legs. Also, it's probably easier to gain time going down than going up (especially true if the course is on even semi-technical trails). The limiting factor going downhill is skill and coordination, which can be easily improved in a month. The limiting factor going up is fitness, and unfortunately you won't do all that much about that in the next 4 weeks.

Bottom line - you should be fine to finish un-injured with even a moderate amount of training. Make sure you train hills, up and (at least once a week) down.

Good luck!
posted by genug at 10:34 AM on January 24, 2007