How about you, Anne? What do you do to train your body to sleep?
For me, dinner is quite important so I eat at five in the evening and usually sleep at eight or nine o’clock at night. But sometimes if I have my iPad or iPhone with me, I’ll get distracted and won’t sleep till 11pm. So I can’t have any distractions.
During the day too, you can’t have so many assignments if you want an early night. Otherwise your heart rate will be too high and you cannot sleep. So just have a low-key day, eat and drink well, with not too much distractions
You need to be well-rested, not half-dead, on race day, to perform well.
Just try and make your sleeping patterns natural. It’s hard to sleep four hours earlier, because you just won’t be able to sleep. Waking up early though, is a good way to get yourself to sleep earlier because your body will feel more tired when night time comes.
The last thing that you should not do the night before a race is to stay up late watching a movie or trying something unfamiliar. I learnt that the hard way, by catching a movie last night, and I ended up thinking about it the entire night! And it’s still stuck in my head!
Listen to calming music to help you sleep. It works wonders.
How much time do you spend on strength exercises?
I don’t really do strength exercises intentionally. I used to play hockey a lot, so I look muscular and I have a good foundation because of this.
I work as a personal trainer during the day and do demonstrations and strength training as part of my work, so this helps with my running too. As well, I do lots of hill repeats during training sessions that give me strength too – for my running.
All runners are different in terms of flexibility and structure and there is no one solution that can apply to everyone. Your flexibility as a runner depends on you. If you are generally stiffer in your running, you need more flexibility training but if your core muscles are weaker, then spend more time on strength training.
I don’t really believe in gym training – I prefer sports-specific training. For example, I prefer strength training through hill repeats, intervals and other endurance exercises – not so much of working out in the gym.
The returns of doing strength exercises like hill repeats and intervals are faster than going to the gym. A good chunk (80%) of your training schedule should focus on strength training as a runner. You can use your body weight for strength training. Body weight is the way to go. So try and find hills and then run up them. This is a simple way to run faster.
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