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There is a method of not crossing the finish line devastated.
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It has to do with efficient energy management.
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It is called “Negative split,” and in this article we explain what it is about
We often tell you: it doesn’t matter to cross the finish line first, but it definitely matters to cross it “handsomely.” It is a playful way of pointing out that one of the memories you will take home will be the photo at the finish line. Getting there smiling and happy (and possibly without your eyes down on the GPS) is something everyone would be well advised to aim for.
One way to accomplish this is not to arrive devastated at the finale. By that time you will have the whole race behind you, so only careful management of your energy will allow you to conserve the final 5 percent to cross the finish line smoothly.
How to accomplish this?
Why do you arrive at the finish line completely done?
The most immediate explanation is that at the end of a race you have run out of energy. The more comprehensive one, however, is another: if you have run out of it most likely it is because you poorly managed it. The most classic way to do this is to handle the first part of the race carelessly, starting off buoyantly since you are full of energy and running above your average. The illusion is short-lived, and even before halfway through you realize that you have miscalculated: you can no longer keep up that pace and, above all, your energy starts to fade.
Strava data confirms this: just 8 percent of amateur runners manage to race in negative split, that is, running the final part faster than the initial part. You may have guessed the reason by now: inefficient management of energy, and especially its waste in the first half of the race.
Experts in the Journal of Sport Analytics have also observed that those who perform better in the race are not those who accumulate a large lead in the first half but instead are those who manage to have an even and solid pace in most of the race and then accelerate in the last leg (another way of saying “negative split” is in fact this: steady and not maximum pace in the first half, acceleration in the second).
How to do it
Now that you understand the meaning of negative split, how to put it into practice? In this, our friend the sportwatch helps us tremendously: by setting a pace goal, it is easy to know even at a glance when to stay above or below this goal.
Let’s say that the pace you want to keep depends on your marathon time goal: from it depends a certain pace that you should keep consistently, in order to achieve your target time. If you want to succeed, however, by applying the negative split, you will have to start the race slower and then, after a few kilometers (when you have passed the initial runner’s cap) you can speed up, increasing little by little at each intermediate distance you set for yourself by program, until you reach the average pace set at the beginning. And here-at least theoretically-the miracle will happen: since you didn’t hold it for the entire first half of the race, you will still have enough energy not only to continue at that speed but more importantly to accelerate a bit.
That’s why if everything goes as planned, you might even finish the race in a shorter time than you thought. Or at least you could pull it off with the best smile on your face.