Tired of starting like a rocket and finishing like a rock? Learn the art of pace management and stop sabotaging your races.
- Starting too fast is the most common mistake: you burn energy immediately by using the anaerobic system.
- Adrenaline and the crowd deceive you, making you feel omnipotent in the first miles.
- Strategy 1: Perform a calibrated warm-up (with strides) to “turn on” the aerobic engine before the starting gun.
- Strategy 2: In the first miles, brake voluntarily. Use your watch (run 5–10 seconds slower than your goal pace) or perception (low RPE).
- Strategy 3: Use your breath as a metronome (e.g., 2-in, 2-out rhythm) to know if you’re redlining.
- The goal is the “negative split”: running the second half of the race faster than the first. It’s more efficient and psychologically rewarding.
Do You Always Start Like a Rocket and Then Collapse? Here’s How to Stop Sabotaging Your Races.
You are at the starting line, you hear the gun, the music starts, you are surrounded by hundreds of energized people, and you simply lose your mind. The first two miles fly by. You feel invincible. “Today is the day,” you think, “I feel great, my watch must be broken, I’m flying.”
Then, usually around the third or fourth mile (if it’s a 10k) or much more tragically around mile 18 (if it’s a marathon), the light goes out. Your legs suddenly turn to granite, your breathing becomes labored, and every step becomes a grueling struggle to conquer. The race you trained so long for is turning into a long, painful ordeal just to reach the finish line.
If you recognize yourself in this description, welcome to the club. You have just sabotaged your race. Starting “out of the gate” and then “crashing” is the most classic, frustrating, and widespread mistake in the world of amateur running. It is the perfect way to guarantee a mediocre performance and maximum suffering.
But it’s not an inevitable fate. It’s just poor resource management.
Why Starting Slow Is So Hard (But So Important).
It’s not your fault. Or rather, not entirely. At the start of a race, our body is an explosive cocktail of adrenaline, nervousness, and excitement. Adrenaline, in particular, is a liar: it masks fatigue. It makes you feel omnipotent, making you believe you can maintain a pace that, under normal conditions, would destroy you after a few minutes.
The problem is physiological. When you start too fast, your body doesn’t have time to efficiently activate the aerobic system (the one that burns fat and oxygen, our almost infinite diesel engine). Instead, you rely heavily on the anaerobic system (the one that burns sugar quickly, our jet engine). The result? You produce lactic acid (or rather, hydrogen ions, if we want to be picky) at a rate your body cannot clear.
You go into an oxygen debt almost immediately. And that debt, my friend, you pay with sky-high interest for the entire second half of the race.
Starting slow, on the other hand, means giving your aerobic engine time to “prime.” It means using the right fuel at the right time, preserving the “premium” energy (muscle glycogen) for when it’s really needed: at the finish.
3 Practical Strategies for Becoming a Consistent Pacing Master.
Controlling the initial urge is not easy. It’s a mental battle before it is a physical one. But it can be learned. Here are three concrete strategies to apply right away.
1. The “Calibrated” Warm-Up: Not Too Much, Not Too Little.
Many runners make a mistake right here. They either don’t warm up at all (starting “cold,” which amplifies the initial shock to the body) or they warm up too much (arriving tired at the start).
The intelligent warm-up has a precise purpose: to tell the body, “Hey, get ready, we’re about to get serious.” You need to activate the cardiovascular system and “wake up” the aerobic engine before the gun fires.
How to do it: 10–15 minutes of very slow running, followed by some dynamic mobility exercises and, crucially, 3–4 “strides” (short accelerations of 80–100 yards at race pace, or slightly faster). These strides serve to raise your heart rate and tell your body: “Okay, this is the pace we will maintain.” That way, when you start, race pace won’t feel like a shock.
2. The First Miles: Brake, Brake, Brake! (How to Do It with a Watch or RPE).
This is the most difficult moment. You have the adrenaline; everyone is passing you. The temptation to speed up is very strong. You must resist.
With the watch: This is the simplest method. Establish your goal race pace (example: 8:00 min/mile). Good. The first two miles must be run slower. Force yourself to be 5, 10, or even 15 seconds slower than your goal (example: 8:10–8:15 min/mile). It will feel ridiculously easy. You will feel like you are standing still. That’s perfectly fine. Let the others go. You will catch them later.
With perception (RPE): If you don’t use a watch, use the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale, from 1 to 10. The start of a race (especially a long one) should be perceived as a “controlled” effort, let’s say a 5 or 6/10. You should have the feeling of “being able to hold a conversation.” If you’re already out of breath after two minutes, you’re doing everything wrong.
3. Your Internal Metronome: Use Your Breath to Avoid Redlining.
Your watch can lie (maybe the GPS goes crazy between buildings), but your breath is the most honest feedback you have. It’s your tachometer.
Learn to listen to it and synchronize it with your steps. For a controlled 10k or half marathon effort, a common breathing rhythm is 2:2 (two steps as you inhale, two steps as you exhale). If you’re at the beginning and already struggling, if your breathing is chaotic and you have to switch to a 1:1 rhythm (one step inhale, one step exhale), it means you are “redlining.” You are going too fast, period. Slow down immediately until your breath returns to a manageable rhythm.
The Goal: Running a “Negative Split” (and Feeling Like a Champion).
There’s a technical term for the art of running the second half of a race faster than the first: it’s called a “negative split.” It is the opposite of what 90% of amateur runners do, who run a “positive split” (i.e., they crash).
Running a negative split is not only the most physiologically efficient strategy to achieve your best time. It is, above all, an invaluable psychological feeling.
It means reaching the halfway point feeling still good. It means ceasing to be the prey (running away from fatigue) and becoming the hunter. You start overtaking those who blew past you at the start, the ones who are now walking or dragging themselves. It means finishing strong, crossing the finish line with the feeling of having dominated the distance, and not being its victim.
And it is much, much more fun.