RTTC #213 Race Day Cross the Finish Line With Confidence

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali walks listeners through exactly how to approach race week so they can cross the finish line feeling calm, prepared, and confident instead of panicked and second-guessing themselves. 

She reminds runners that the hay is in the barn: the training is done, and this is not the time for bonus miles, pace tests, or trying to cram in fitness at the last minute. 

Instead, she explains how slow, back-of-the-pack runners should focus on the things that matter most in the final days before a race: resting, walking instead of running, hydrating early and consistently, fueling on the course based on time on feet instead of distance, and carb loading intentionally instead of assuming one pasta dinner is enough. 

Dr. Ali also speaks directly to runDisney runners who have been told their pace “doesn’t count” and reinforces that slower runners often need to fuel even more strategically because they are out on the course longer.

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  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about race day across the finish line with confidence. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for injury-prone Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Alley, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong without feeling broken or held together with KT tape as they cross the finish line. So at the time that you're listening to this, it is springtime surprise race week. So maybe you're doing the 5K, maybe you're doing the 10K, maybe you're doing the 10 miler, maybe you're doing all three. Maybe you are even listening to this months later. Who knows? Maybe even years later, and you have a different race happening this week. This will all apply to all of the race distances at any point. And I'll update this as we go through. So if if it's been a while, check to see if there's another update. But I want to help you have confidence so that you can cross the finish line at your race this week. So the first phrase that I want you to hear is the hay is in the barn. It's done. You have done everything in your power running wise, strength training wise, endurance building wise. You have done everything in that grouping for success. Whatever you have done for training, it's done. But this week is not the time to do more training. If anything, I want you to rest and relax from all of the hard work you've done. That means no extra miles this week. Keep things feeling loose, mobile, and good. So walk. No more running. And today is Tuesday. If you're doing the challenge and you're listening to this, the challenge starts on Friday. So 5K Friday, 10K on Saturday, 10 miler on Sunday. You have like another day to walk and make that be expo day. Walk around the expo. But we're not trying to get one more long run in. Let's see if I can do race pace. Let's prove I want to make sure I can cross that finish line faster than a 16 minute per mile pace. That ship has sailed. Now is not the time to do that. If you need to check to see if you can do that pace, that needs to be six weeks ago. Okay. We're not doing that this week. This week is all about conserving energy to use on race day and visualizing our success. So the hay is in the barn. You have done the hard work. It is over. It is done. Give yourself a pat on the back for all of the hard work you've done for the past couple of months. It's done. You have done it. You have done as good of a job as you could, right? If you think you could have done better, apply that to the next training. That's okay. We all go in waves, we all go in seasons. Stuff doesn't go a hundred percent according to plan all of the time. Me, as an example, this training round for the 10 miler, actually for the challenge, but I say the 10 miler because I think in terms of what's the longest distance I'm training for, it wasn't perfect. I did the bare minimum. I know I will cross the finish line because I did the bare minimum to get me across the finish line. It's not going to be fast. I am actually already planning. I am walking the 5K, I will run the 10K, and I will walk the 10 miler. I'm actually going to be in one of the last corrals with some other runners and we are doing it together. I'm going to pace them to make sure that they get across the finish line. It's all business. We are like, it's, it's, I would love to say it's a party in the back. It's not. We are doing this together, but it is not chit-chat time. We are there for a purpose. And I'm, I'm down for it. But training for me didn't go perfect. I had some ups and downs. It happens. Sometimes you have to do the bare minimum to just cross the finish line. That's okay. And then there'll be another season where it is full steam ahead, right? And go for a proof of time or, you know, everything just hits the mark and every training happens and everything goes great and I get to get faster. That's my goal for the next training phase because I have already signed up for a 10K proof of time or a race that I will use for a proof of time. It is a 10K distance. But this is just to say this week, what you have done is as good as it could be this time. I hope it was wonderful. But no, if it wasn't, it's not the end of the world. There's still some things that you can do non-training wise to get you across the finish line. One of those things is to not do more training this week. Keep it light, keep it breezy, 45-minute walk, or just walk around the expo, keep yourself feeling good. You can do some stretches if you have some aches and pains. You can do some foam rolling, some massage gun. Of course, nothing new race week. You hear things like nothing new race day, nothing new race week in my world. Because if you've never foam rolled or you've never used a massage gun, you can actually be sore for days after using it for the first time. Same thing with professional massages. If you aren't used to getting professional massages and you get one now, you could be sore for a week. I don't advise it. But if you've been doing them regularly, by all means. If your body tolerates it, absolutely go for it. No extra training, no extra miles, no last minute miles for sure. Okay. The second thing you can do is fuel. So many runners think, oh, well, it's just run Disney. It's so easy. It's so relaxed. It's for fun. It's not that serious. I don't need to fuel or I don't need to carbload. You do, you do. And I actually will say that for the audience listening, you for sure do because you are a back-of-the-pack slow runner. We don't fuel for the number of miles we're running or walking. We are fueling based on how much time we are going to be on our feet out there on the course. So sure, you may be doing 10 miles and some elite runner, 10 miles takes them one hour. Maybe they take in one gel, but your 10 miles might take two and a half hours. Your body being out there for two and a half hours, one foot in front of the other, cannot sustain that, cannot stay upright, cannot stay energized on one gel. It's 60 to 90 grams of carbs per hour you're out there beyond the first hour. So I recommend when you are fueling on the course, it's one gram of carb per minute. So two and a half hours is 150 minutes. That's 150 grams of carbohydrates. Minimum. Okay. 90 grams of carbs per hour, I mean. Minimum 150 grams of carbs. You can get that from gels. You can get that from hydration like scratch, power aid. You can get it from candy. That's my favorite. Nerds Gummy Clusters all day, all day for races. I also use liquid IV and scratch. I do mix the two. I don't mix flavors. I have some clients in Stronger Faster Finisher that like to mix flavors. I don't. I do strawberry lemonade scratch and strawberry lemonade liquid IV. I save strawberry lemonade only for when I am running. So then I don't get that sick of it because I'm only running three days a week most weeks. Some weeks I didn't run at all. So no strawberry lemonade liquid IV and scratch for me. And that's okay. Life happens. Life gets lifey. But I save it, so I like it. Same with nerds gummy clusters. I save it for when I am running. So then I don't get that sick of it. I mean, maybe eventually I will. Who knows? When I train for this marathon that my stronger faster finisher members have convinced me to do, maybe I'll get sick of it. I don't know. Time will tell. But fueling is so important at this pace. Please, please, please ignore the naysayers. Ignore the people who say, well, that's barely running. Like a 16 minute per mile pace, that's barely running. Man, that's barely even walking. Ignore them when they say those things. A, ignore them when they say those things. But also B, ignore them when they say those things in relation to you not needing to fuel. If anything, you need to fuel more than somebody who's going to be out there faster. I mean, yes, you are using carbohydrates the same way, but you're out there longer. Like that one hour finisher for the 10 miler, they get to go and be done. And at an hour 15, they're eating a Mickey Mickey waffle. You still have to wait until two and a half hours. So fuel on the course. But of course, nothing new on race day. So if you don't know if your stomach can tolerate it, go easy. At this point, if you haven't practiced with fuel, do a little bit. A little bit will be better than nothing. And use this information for future races. I really don't want you having a crazy stomach ache on the course now. But come back to this and start practicing fueling for the next race beyond that. But if you have been practicing fueling, lean into it. So that was number one, don't overdo it. Don't try and add more bonus miles and some last minute miles. Number two, fuel on the course. Number three, hydrate on the course, especially at this time of year in Orlando. It is going to be hot. It is going to be humid. You need hydration. And it's actually best to start hydrating a couple of days in advance because when you're out there on the course and you're feeling like you need fluids, if you chug it, it's not as beneficial as if you've just been sipping it. So that's actually one of the reasons why I am constantly, almost constantly, sipping my water. I don't chug it. A, I don't want the liquid just like swashing around in my belly, right? Like that's uncomfortable. But I also sip it because my body will utilize it better. And I won't just chug all of this water, fill up my stomach, and then pee it out. It will be absorbed in a proper cadence, proper frequency, and be able to be utilized. So start hydrating a couple of days in advance. Best if it's an electrolyte drink. So Gatorade, Power Aid, Pediolite, Gator Lite, Liquid IV, Scratch, Tailwind, the all of the different drinks that you use for training and for your race. Start drinking those a couple of days in advance and sip on them. Number four is carb load. Leading up to your race, carb load. And I know what you many of you are going to say, I am so good at carb loading. I am so good at eating carbs. The thing I need help with is eating protein. Please, please, please. I implore you to calculate how many carbs you need leading up to the races. So this challenge, this springtime surprise challenge, because the longest distance is 10 miles, you don't need as many days as you would for a two-course uh challenge with the 10K and the half mile. Half half mile, half marathon or a marathon or dopey or goofy, you still should, you still should carb load. But the amount of carbs you need per day leading up to your race is based on your weight. It's eight to 12 grams of carbs per kilogram body weight. So for somebody who weighs 200 pounds, that's about 900. Yeah, it's about 900 grams of carbs because it's about 90 kilograms. That's a lot of carbs. So for somebody who is good at eating carbs, yes, please be good at eating carbs, but please track it and actually know what you are taking in and do it in advance. Don't think back afterward. So when somebody thinks, oh, I'm so good at eating carbs, yes, maybe you are. Maybe you love pastas and pizza and bread and rice and candy, right? You love it. We have been fooled into thinking there is a lot, a lot, a lot of carbs per serving. And so one meal of pasta is gonna yield a thousand grams of carbs. Oh, all I need to do is eat one pasta dinner the night before, and I've hit my 900 grams of carbs. It's not that many. It's not that many. I invite you to look up, either Google it or download like MyFitness Pal. I love that because there's a free version, and you can input how much you ate. Now it does involve knowing how many servings you have eaten and put in how many servings you ate of the thing you ate and see how many grams of carbs it actually is. It's not as many as we have been told in the past because this whole, like the past couple of decades, it's been all protein, protein, protein. You need protein, you need protein. I have a whole conversation about why runners should not be doing only protein. It's a whole other conversation. But we have been, it's been ingrained in our minds that everything else is no good and it it's going to make us gain all of this weight. And there's just so many carbs in all every little bit of pasta. Yes, pastas are carb heavy. They do have more carbs than they do protein or fats, but that still doesn't mean that there's a ton. It doesn't mean hundreds and hundreds per serving. It's like 35 grams per serving. You know, I heard somebody say the other day, gosh, I remember, I wish I remembered what it was. Um, we were talking about, or they were talking, I was not part of the conversation. This was on Instagram. They said that liquid IV is pure sugar. Okay. A, it's not. It has other electrolytes in it. But what they meant was there's no protein in it, and that in their mind it was not healthy. Now, healthy versus not healthy, good versus bad food. If you've been around, you know I don't think that way. Food has a purpose. And sometimes the purpose is I like it and it's making me happy right now. Right? We can't do that all the time. But sometimes, yeah, the milk duds are what I want to be eating. And there's no other purpose than these are tasty right now, and this is what I want, and that's okay. But going back to this liquid IV, the liquid IV is pure sugar. Liquid IV has like 10 grams of carbs, which means there's like 10 grams of sugar in it, 10 or 11. So is it all sugar? Sure, maybe. But when somebody says, oh, that's all sugar, what do you think? Like my mind, from what I have been taught since I was a child, that makes me think, oh, it's a hundred grams of sugar, which means it's about a hundred grams of carbs. But that's not true. It's 10. And if I need 900 grams of carbs, I need 90 packets of liquid IV that day. That's a lot. So the one pack of liquid IV is good. It's 10 grams toward my goal, but having one doesn't hit, you know, the 100 grams that my mind tricks me into thinking that is. Same thing with pasta at a restaurant. Like I'm thinking about this right now. I love pasta. I get the I got the spaghetti and meatballs. I'm thinking back to half marathon weekend, Halloween half marathon weekend at Disneyland. And I got the pasta the night before the 10K and the night before the half marathon. But I still needed to eat like two Pop Tarts. I had two cosmic brownies. I had five strawberry lemonades from like the fountain drink. And I still had other things. Like the pasta itself, and I cleaned my plate. I ate it all. Felt really stuffed after, but I ate it like four o'clock. So I had plenty of time to digest before bed. But I couldn't just eat that one bowl of pasta. And as I was listing all of that, I feel like Cher Horowitz from Clueless, where she's and I had a handful of peanut butter MMs, five Twizzlers, felt like a total heifer. Love that movie, but that's what I was just thinking of as I was listing all these carbs. But the point is, the one pasta dish the night before the race, not enough. Not enough. Even though we have been trained to believe pasta has so many carbs. Yes, it has more carbs in comparison to a chicken breast, because a chicken breast is a low-carb, high protein food item. And that's okay that pasta has more carbs than that. But a a serving of pasta the night before a race is not that much, especially when you need like 900 grams of carbs. So I really do invite you to plan it out, look at it ahead of time so that you don't get to dinner time and think, oh, well, I'm just gonna have this one pasta dish and it's plenty. It's not enough. Plan it out so that you start having things at breakfast, you have things for snack, you have things at lunch, you have another snack. And you may be thinking, Allie, that's so much food. It is. If you aren't thinking, God, I can't fit any more in me. Oh my God, I had so much to eat today. If you're not thinking that, you didn't have enough. Already I can tell you didn't have enough. And I want that pre-race carb load. It's one day for the 10K. So 10K is on Saturday, so carb load on Friday. You technically don't need to carbload for the 5K. You could have just that pasta dinner the night before because the amount of time the 5K will take, you don't need to store up all of that energy. You can just use the local energy that you're getting as you're eating that morning. 10 miler, two days. And if you're doing the 10K and the 10 miler, do like two and a half days of carb loading. So you would start like Thursday afternoon. Excuse me, Friday afternoon if you're doing the 10K and the 10 miler. Did I just do that math right? Yeah, because if you're doing the 10 miler, you would be carb loading for on Saturday and Friday. And so if you're doing the two, you're starting Thursday afternoon. Yes. Okay. Start Thursday afternoon. Sorry, confused myself. When I start thinking about the different race weekends, sometimes I forget which days are which race, because you know, dopey, it becomes a little different. And then then there's Goofy, which is the half and the full. And then Springtime Surprise, the only one with the 10 miler. So so sorry. But if you're doing the 10 miler, it's two days. So you want to carbload on Friday and Saturday. If you're doing the 10K, you only need one day. You could do a little bit more if you wanted. So that would be Friday. If you're doing the 10K and the 10 miler, you're gonna start like Thursday afternoon. And if you're Doing all three of them, uh, you don't really need to carbload for the 5K, but you could be replacing whatever you used on the 5K on Thursday. So again, you're starting Thursday, late Thursday morning, early Thursday afternoon. The best way to get all of your carbs, the easiest way to get all of your carbs is to drink them. Juices, Gatorades, Power Aids, uh, full sugar sodas. I I start my race morning off with a Coke. Normally it's a bottle of Coke, so it's 16.9 fluid ounces, but I think this time where I'm going, actually, I can get access to Coca-Cola products cans. So I'll probably have two cans. That's okay. I just calculate it differently. And I've, but I've already thought about this ahead of time. So I know, oh, can't just do one can because that's only 12 ounces, not 16, right? So I'll probably have two. So that means 24 ounces. So I'm a little bit more than needed. That's okay. That's okay to be a little bit more. You're going to utilize those carbs on race day. So it's gonna be really hard to hit 900 grams of carbs as the example for a 200-pound person. Remember, it's based on how much you weigh. And I've done all the calculations for anybody who has purchased my race day bundle, which is$23, or if you're in Stronger Faster Finisher, you already have access to that, the pre-race carb load. If you're interested in getting it,$23, I'll put the link in the description. And you have instant access and you get to do it based on your weight and the foods you like. I already have a full list there, but you can add whatever foods you like on there. But look at it ahead of time, plan it out so that you're not backtracking. Because at the end of the day, when you're trying to go to sleep, trying to think, what did I have for breakfast this morning? Did I have three of those small mini waffles, Mickey waffles, or did I have four of them? Did I have 75 of them? How many did I have? No, do it, plan it out and then actually follow through and eat that amount. But you will be very surprised at how much extra you will have to eat beyond what you already thought about. Like a large bagel as an example, like one of those Thomas's large bagels, like the kind that you can buy in the grocery store, has like 50 grams of carbs. Now, don't get me wrong, that's a lot of carbs, but a lot of people think that that has, again, like a hundred grams of carbs. So it doesn't. So if you're looking for a hundred grams of carbs, you would need to have two of those. So you plan it out and have as many carbs as you can get in and utilize drinking your carbs, not in the form of alcohol. I get that joke every single time. Well, I could just have some beer, right? That's carbs. Sure, but don't drink alcohol before the race. Um, one of my clients was telling me, just actually, you probably just listened to her episode a couple of days ago. Paige was telling me that she had a cocktail after the half marathon, and she's, you know, she drinks, you know, that's not new for her. I don't want to say she drinks regularly. I have no idea. But she said that that's not new to her, but she felt so yucky after having an alcoholic beverage after the half marathon. She was like, thank goodness I drank it so early in the day. So by the time it was time for bed, I was recovered for the marathon the next day because she was doing dopey. But don't drink alcohol leading up to the race if you want to enjoy the race and feel good the whole time. Right? So this week, just to recap, the hay is in the barn. You've done all of the hard work. No extra miles, no bonus miles. Leave it. Just walk. If anything, this is the best week to not do a darn thing. This is the best week. I hear so many runners like, oh my God, it's race week. I don't have time to run. I'm like, oh, this is the best time to not have time to run. This is great. Don't run. Don't run. Think about your fueling for the race, like on the race course. Every 20 minutes, take in 20 more grams. So you hit your minimum of 60 grams per hour. Start hydrating and pre-race carb loading a couple of days in advance. Because it's going to be hot and humid, start hydrating even earlier. And if you're flying in, hydrate before you fly. People get dehydrated when they fly. Part of just the travel itself, but also many people don't drink as much on the plane because they don't want to bother their seatmates by having to get up and go to the bathroom as much. So start hydrating the day before you fly for sure. Like I'm flying on Monday. I'm going to hydrate on Sunday just so that I'm not behind. And then I'm going to be in Disney. I get there Monday, then Tuesday when you guys listen to this. Wednesday and Thursday, I'm going to be hydrating, but I'm going to be sipping so that it's just a kind of a constant flow. And then pre and pre race carb loading based on how much you weigh, what race distance you're doing, plan it out ahead of time.