by Coach Steve
BOISE RunWalk (www.boiserunwalk.com)
(208) 639-1434

Strategy, is word referring to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. You have chosen to run or walk a marathon, or half marathon or 10K distance after training for 12 to 24 weeks, and strategy will gather all you learn over the training period into a plan put into action on race day.

A strategy refers to options that you'll chose between. In a long distance race, the forces of weather, road conditions, physiology and psychology tend to come together creating a set of choices and decisions for the runner or walker. Accomplishing your goal depends on the decisions you make, and the best decisions are based on information gathered during the training season.

In your training with BOISE RunWalk you'll be coached on how you can make the best decisions, and you'll discover that your decisions are much better if you have experimented throughout the training program.

Training Workouts and Experimentation
Every long weekly workout during your training is an opportunity to experiment and gather information on the results of your experiments. Approach each long workout with a goal pace and goal split times, and approach each workout properly fueled and hydrated. During your workouts ask yourself how you feel, how's your performance. After the workout over the next several hours, ask yourself the same questions, again the following day. Depending on how you paced yourself during the workout, the distance you ran, and the nutritional condition of your athletic body, the decisions you made regarding hydration and choice of electrolytes, your performance and recovery can range from poor to great.

So how do you know what pace to walk or run? And what should you eat, and how much should you have drank over the last week? These and other questions have answers that are personalized to you, and you'll learn the answers over the course of the season by experimenting with different paces, different foods, fluids, shoes, commercial sources of carbohydrate and the like.

Sources of Information
Good information is available from your coaches, good topical books, the internet and fellow runners and walkers. Most Saturday mornings with BOISE RunWalk you take part in group discussions designed to deliver important information, get you thinking in terms of choices and decisions, and to help you experiment during the season so that you may create a solid strategic plan for race day.

Putting it all together
Strategy uses information gathered from past decisions to make decisions about the present and future. The decisions you'll be facing over the course of the training season and race day will cover a variety of topics (see table).

Various topics involved in a typical group training program are:
Experimentation, Choice of carbohydrate, Choice of fluids, Source of electrolytes, Nutrition and Hydration Strategy Race Week, Mental Preparation and Course Challenges, Race Day Morning, Post Race
Pacing and Splits, Nutrition, Strategy


Conclusion and Recommendation
Use each training week to make decisions on nutrition, hydration, rest, recovery, electrolytes, pace, splits (etc), and monitor the results of your performance on mood, aches and pains, resting heart rate and overall wellness. Adopt the attitude that training involves learning, and learning involves experimenting, and strategy is about making good decisions concerning what works good for you.

BOISE RunWalk. Boise running!