An old coach of mine had a very simple saying, "finish at the finish."
Seems simple enough to do, right?
In a race or event, this absolutely makes sense but he also used to say this during almost every training session. Whether it was an easy recovery run or a hard interval session, 'finish at the finish' still rings true. Just like you can’t imagine stopping your race 100 metres before the finish line, nor should you imagine this during training. We are creatures of habit and by finishing actually at the finish and not before, we are looking to create a positive habit that is reinforced in each and every session, not just when the coach is looking.
By running the full 40 minutes for your 40 minute run and not 39:50 because you ran up and down your street to complete the full run, you may look slightly strange to your neighbours but you are doing yourself a favour.
Take a second to imagine the compound effect of practicing this pattern over a full 16 or 20 week training block.... Because of this, quitting before the end of your big event becomes even more unimaginable.
So how and why do we sometimes finish before the finish? Here are five ways that runners don’t complete their training sessions properly:
Cutting Corners.
Reducing the amount of rest between intervals.
Slowing down before the finish point.
Not doing intervals at the right intensity.
Finishing early on a training run.
So why do these things?
As a coach, I'm not overly concerned whether the reason a runner might be finishing before the finish is laziness, lack of concentration, lack of care or something else. Any of these on one occasion isn't the problem. The concern I have is around the patterns and habits that are forming each and every time that we don't do the session properly. So often, the level of commitment you put in during your training is reflected in your race day. I actually think that more often than not, we do these things out of a combination of competitiveness and fear. Competitiveness to keep up with the people around us and fear of not being good enough.
I’m not suggesting that you should push through to the end if you are injured, or turn up to a session if you are sick but once you are there and started, complete the session at hand, as it was designed to be completed. You will feel more satisfaction and gain more momentum from doing this regularly than you can possibly imagine, as well as setting a great example to other training partners and solid foundations for a really successful next race.
As the Greek poet Archilochus said, "We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training." I love this quote. It rings true in different parts of our lives, but with our running it shows us that we train so that when race day comes, our training practices are so engrained, that they basically become race day reactions with barely a thought.