Ideas on Maintaining Fast Leg Turnover Toward End of Race?

[Steve P]

I'm running a 6.2 mile race this Saturday that is on a loop course. The last 1.5 miles have a fair amount of uphill. I'm trying to come up with ideas on how to maintain leg turnover during that part when fatigue will surely be setting in. Maybe I could have trained differently (e.g. run more intervals, etc.), but it is what it is at this point.

Two that I came up with are to count to 100 repeatedly (that has been somewhat effective for me in the past) or to listen to upbeat music (but I don't run with an ipod). And then of course another way is to just gut it out. Oh, another one could be to focus on reeling in other runners.

Any other ideas?

[Sasha Pachev]

Sing

There was a farmer, had a dog, and BINGO was his name....

Set the beat to 190. You do not need an iPOD for that, the tune and the words are easy enough to remember for somebody who grew up in the US, or whose kids are growing up in the US.

Can help you speed up by about 5 seconds a mile.

If you can, find something to get angry about in a way that generates force, but not in a way that just makes you emotionally upset.

Focus on running smooth, think of an antelope or some other smooth animal running.  Watch a video of a smooth world-class runner the night before the race. During the race try to duplicate the smoothness. Do not try to duplicate particular elements of the form, those are individual, and may not be right for you. But the overall smoothness is a universal quality. Find a way to run smooth while angry.

Pick a runner in front of you and use him as a magnet. If somebody passes you, latch on. Being forced to run fast when tired is the best way to improve your form. Because you cannot run fast by putting in more power any longer, you have no more power left. So if you tell your mind "run fast", it will either fail, or it will improve the economy. The key is to make "fast" slow enough that it will not fail but fast enough so it is still faster than what you are doing naturally.