Warm-ups…

I’ve never questioned the value of warm-ups before a race and I’ve always done them. However, it’s been during recent threshold workouts that I’ve had the benefit of warm-ups reinforced. Threshold is where I’m not going quite at race pace but I am going about as hard as I can at that distance for a training run. By the end of it, I should be spent. The goal is to mimic race conditions. In short, it’s a tough effort with high exertion.

When I was younger and I went for a threshold run, I simply threw on my shoes, stepped out the door, and took the tachometer up to redline.

That doesn’t work so well any more. I often feel much worse early in the run than I did in prior years and my pace might drop off. What I also noticed is that in the first mile or two,  if I came to an involuntary stop (street crossing) or voluntary stop (this sucks and I feel terrible), when I picked it back up again, I felt infinitely better.

So what does that mean? I’m adding a short warm-up for my threshold runs. For races, I typically run an easy 10-15 minutes before anything up to the 10K distance. (Anything longer, like a 10-miler, and the warm-up time is shorter. My top speed during the race isn’t as fast so I don’t need to be as loose, and I don’t want to lose too much in the warmup.)

I’m not doing a full race-level warmup for the threshold runs, just a quarter or half-mile jog. But, it should be enough to wake my legs and lungs up and help me jump into a redline-level effort without feeling quite as awful. In doing so, it could help the workout more accurately mimic the race, as in allowing me to maintain the planned pace better and reduce the odds of a voluntary stop.