Baselining for Racing
How do you know what your race time goals should be? This is an important question when you are putting together a structured training plan.
You need to find your baseline.
“But, Chris…” You ask, “You’ve been training and racing for over 30 years. How could you not know your baseline?”
And, indeed, I am probably better informed by my experience, but that was then, this is now. I’m coming off an injury that sidelined me for a couple years and I’m in a new age group. My history is informative, but in some ways, also inhibitive. If I start training assuming a baseline from 5 years ago I’m guaranteed to be wrong.
This is true for any runner that is entering a training cycle from an unknown starting point. New runners. Runners who have never gone through structured training. Runners cominginto a new age group. Runners coming back from an illness or injury.
All may need to establish a baseline before they launch into structured training.
What do I mean by baseline?
First, I mean the physical baseline.
- What is your aerobic fitness? Your heart and lungs and muscular ability to work at a certain level of effort for a certain amount of time. How quickly does your heart rate rise and how quickly does it recover?
- What is your base capability in terms of effort and pace and how do they correlate?
- What is your fragility index (I just made that up). How much volume and quality work can you do without breaking down and still be able to recover to reap the benefits?
- What’s your base flexibility?
Second, I mean your mental baseline.
- Is your desire for the outcome enough to pull you through the discipline of a multi-month structured training cycle?
- Are you able to commit to the work? Are you able to commit to the ‘suck’ and the ‘suffering’ when things get dark?
And finally, your practical baseline.
- What’s your experience level? Are you new to the work or an old veteran?
- Do you have the time and space in your life to commit to that cycle?
- Does this cycle and this outcome align with your purpose?
Physical Baseline:
The best way, and probably the only way, to find your physical baseline is to test it. The way you test it is by simulating racing conditions.
Here are some examples:
- A 5K.
- A set of speed intervals at the track
- A long temp run with a fast finish
From each of these you will see what your current pace and effort baseline is. Could you hold the pace? What pace? What did your heartrate do during the effort? Did it spike to max? At what point in the effort did you fail? Did your form break? Did you experience pain?
More importantly, how did it feel?
When you were in that interval, or that 5K, or that tempo run, how did the mechanics feel? Do you think you could sustain that through a multiweek cycle?
One session isn’t enough. I have found that these baselining sessions are susceptible to outlier performances. Do them a few times and see where the consistency is.
That will give you a good picture of what your starting point is. Of what your base training paces are and what efforts you are capable of.
Remember, the objective of the baselining is to find a starting point. The goal race and time is the objective. The structured training plan gets you from A to B. Once you have an idea of your starting point you can design a plan to get you to your goal as efficiently as possible.
Here is where I will inject my own experience. I have been coming back from a knee injury that took 2-3 years to mend – through that 2-3 years I virtually stopped running. I still kept a level of exercise going, but not running. I also turned over into a new decade of life.
After that 2-3 year hiatus I began to claw my way back into running. At first my goals were focused on just being able to run again and to be able to go the distance. Over the last 2 years I have slowly rebuilt my base fitness and my health to a point where the possibility of racing goals has once again entered the picture.
So what is my baseline? It’s been 5 years since I’ve focused on a race goal time. I’m not the same athlete.
I have essentially been doing base training for 2 years, slowly building or rebuilding my core fitness. I think I have that core heart, lungs and legs fitness.
What I haven’t even looked at are paces. I know what my target paces were in a past lifetime, and I can guess what they should be now, but I wouldn’t know until I tested them.
I also don’t know how my body will respond to volume and distance. For the past two years my weekly mileage has been hovering in the 20 – 30 mile range and my long runs, few that there are, have peaked out around 18 miles.
In my experience, in order to run a goal pace at a marathon I need to get up into the 50 mile a week range and get a handful of long runs around 20 miles.
So, that is what I set out to test over the last few weeks.
First, I leaned into my existing tempo runs and instead of hitting them at my normal 75-85% effort, instead pushed them to perceived 5K race pace.
What this translates to from runner geek to English is that I have these 8-10 mile bread and butter runs that I do on the rail trail. I ease into them with a couple miles of warmup, then raise the effort level as the run progresses.
For my baselining test I put the gas pedal down for those last couple miles at the end of the workout to see what the pace was.
The result was, and this made me quite happy, that my paces fell around 20 – 30 seconds per mile faster than my goal marathon pace.
Positive results.
Next, I had coach drop in some track work. I had to work around a sore back but was able to do a set of 5 focused, 1,000 meter repeats down at the track. I was able to hold the form and mechanics and, again, found my speed/tempo pace about 40 seconds per mile faster than goal race pace.
Also very positive.
Next I did a set of mile repeats with a short rest in between on the rail trail. I struggled a bit with this workout, but was again seeing paces 20+ seconds a mile faster than race pace.
Also very positive and right in line with my expectations, however I noticed I was lagging in energy and my legs were extra heavy.
Finally I pushed one of my weekend long runs on the road up over 19 miles. It was reasonably difficult, especially towards the end, but I was able to get it done.
So, on paper my physical capabilities seemed to align with my potential race goals.
Let’s talk about that ‘fragility index’ I just made up. For me as an older athlete, baselining my fitness and my paces is only half the battle. I can’t get to the finish line unless I can get to the starting line. And getting to the starting line requires avoiding injury.
One of the most common things with setting aggressive goals that require higher volume and more intensity as part of your structured training is injury. This is the well-known boom and bust cycle of training.
I am well versed in this.
And a big eye-opener for me from these baselining tests was how fragile I am.
Coming out of that track speedwork session I was physically exhausted for over a day. Not only did my recent knee injury ache, but my forgotten plantar fasciitis was angry, and my hips were sore. Like I said, that leg tiredness carried over to the mile repeat session two days later.
After the 19 miler everything hurt, especially the knee.
Now you might say that this was clearly a case of ‘too much, too fast’ but what I learned was that I can’t force the fitness and expect to recover. My paces are there but my body’s ability to absorb the training and recover are diminished.
This week, a week after that push, my workouts have been horrible. My legs feel like lead.
So in terms of baselining I discovered that my fragility index is too high for aggressive training, and I’ll have to work that into my structure.
As for the Mental Baseline…
To be honest, these goals are not as compelling as they once were. I’ve got nothing to prove. It’s more of a nice-to-have for me now.
I’m not sure that ‘nice-to-have’ is enough. My risk tolerance is lower. At this point in my life, I’d rather be healthy and enjoy the activity than push until I break.
These goals are nice to think about but not worth risking my health over.
Practically…
I am in a position where my life allows me to train for a couple hours a day. That’s not a problem. I have the space in my life and I have all the equipment etc.
I certainly have the experience to ride out a training cycle and I have the experience to manage a race.
Baselining Summary:
In order to build an effective structured training plan you need to baseline your capabilities. The best way to do this is to test them, on the track, on the trail, and on the road. From you actual performances and how your body reacts to them you can set you starting point and your tolerances.
If your body is physically ready, then you must decide if the goal is worthy enough to commit to and if your life is in a position to manage it.
For me, based on my baselining, I will need to manage my recovery and take a slow-ramp approach to this race cycle. I need to be willing to back off at signs of encroaching injury. I can still train but I need to be cautious nad measured.