This most recent race demonstrated this for me in a way I'd not yet experienced and I just have to remind those who don't: Always have a race day plan.
I'm not talking about a step-by-step plan but I'm stunned by how many people go out on a race course with no more of a strategy than "I'm going to run fast." Heck, even the seemingly innocuous goals like "I won't take any walk breaks" can kill you.
I'll be honest. I tore past a lot of much better athletes. They were more fit and clearly better trained, they were also very simple-minded in how they ran.
Their very first problem is that they had obviously read none of the race instructions. A person doesn't need to memorize exactly where each and every water station is but it's good to know if there will be one nearby at a nutrition interval. If you just pour gel down the hatch without any water to dilute it, it will be some time before you get any benefit from that gel.
They also obviously didn't have any goals. If you don't know what you want to do in a race...how can you judge how well you are doing? Have tiers of goals and conditions for each. Going into the race I didn't know how well the hamstring was going to hold up or what kind of cardio condition I really had so my minimum goal was to finish. I knew the cut-off time of the race (YA reason to read the instructions) and I knew I could if anything gave out after mile 5, I could still walk to the end and meet the deadline. The second goal was what I expected, a nice sedate 11:20 m/m pace. I had done this in long runs and I was sure I could do it for the entire length of the course if I just felt okay. Then I had the goal for if everything went right, if I reached mile 3 and everything felt good, I wanted to tie my fastest time (It wasn't REALLY a PR since I wasn't racing) of 2:11.
The best part of having a plan with time goals is that you only have to run your own race. Once I decided to run the race, I was focused on what would allow me to run as fast as possible. While slogging up one rather steep hill, I stopped running. My heart rate was climbing and I was burning lots of fuel and not really moving that fast. A trio of men ran past and one was reminding the others of their goal to not stop running. By the time they reached the apex of the hill, they were utterly exhausted and barely moving at a trot. I blasted past them and never saw them again.
To make any of this work, you have to be honest. Where are your strengths and weaknesses? If you don't have an honest notion of your ability, you can't be mindful when you are burning energy for no good reason. One young lady let it get into her head that I was a better hill runner than she was. I would trot past her on the modest climbs and as I neared the top, she would go racing past...occasionally being forced to a walk by the top of the hill. She wasted her energy surging past me on hill climbs 6 to 8 times during the race. Finally, I stopped seeing her...she finished a solid 5 minutes behind me.
There is one other part of my plan that makes a huge difference...plan your music. If the course allows music and you run with music, take a moment to tailor the playlist. If you know the bad parts of the course, the times where you know your energy is going to be low and the only thing on your mind is quitting, have a sound track that sets your soul on fire. It was no accident that as I was coming up on the 3 mile mark, Disturbed's Indestructable filled my ears.
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