[brianbauer]

I find that it takes me a very long time to get fully warmed up and operating smoothly in both skimo races and running races. the first 20 mins of either discipline usually feels terrible and its simply a mental game to remind myself that the starts always feel terrible and it will get better( it always does). this is not a big deal in long trail races that may take 4-6 hours, but in Skimo and trail races that are 2 hours or less( very common), slow starts are a problem. getting a full warmup is also a problem.

my question is this: can you train your body to go from a “cold start” to race pace with less horrible feeling? eg. do training runs by starting out hard rather than always doing longer warmups?

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on April 8, 2022 at 6:22 pm #65343

Brian:

I do not think you can train yourself to NOT need a warm up. The warm up is critical to your best performance. During the warm up many beneficial things are happening. The aerobic metabolic process is slow to respond to increases in intensity. So, you need many minutes to get it firing on all 12 cylinders. Shortcutting the warm up will mean an over reliance on the anaerobic metabolic pathway and probably worse results.

Scott