One of my best kept coaching secrets - Race Modelling

"Unveiling My Race-Winning Strategy: The Hidden Gem of 400m and 800m Race Mastery"

400 and 800m Race Modelling.

Race modelling is the simulation of a race plan at actual race pace.

One of the biggest areas we focus on during the competition phase of our training plan is “race modelling”. Our emphasis is on the 400m and the 800m and getting the pace correct and understanding how to find the race pace for the individual athlete is critical.

In my opinion, when an athlete is thoroughly prepared and has followed their training plan diligently, achieving personal best times boils down to just two key factors: mental preparation and race modeling.

You can eliminate a lot of the pre-race anxiety for the 400 and 800m if the athlete has simulated the race many times over at training. For us, this consists of performing many of our repeat runs over 145m, 200m, 300m, and 400m from the 400m or 800m start line. Many athletes and coaches will start their training runs from different starting positions around the track but not the actual 400m or 800m start line.

We do a lot of our race modelling work from the actual start position and the athletes will run to a specific mark on the track (cone or chalk mark) and try to hit the assigned target time that they would be running during an actual race.

e.g: 400m race modelling. 3 x 145m from 400m start at the athletes target 400m race pace.

I get the athlete to do this individually one at a time so they do not get distracted and run their own race. For 400m race modelling, we may do a 100m, 120m and 145m all at 400m set race pace. The same would apply to the 800m. I believe this gives the athlete huge confidence to get their pacing right and not worry about what other people are them during their race. We’ve all experienced that race where that one athlete, goes out so hard, and we chase them thinking they are getting away from us, only to blow up and hit the wall and ruin our race. Or we go out too slowly and sit with the rest of the field not using our speed when this might be our biggest strength and advantage.

One of the things we practice on race day is to go through our normal warm-up process and then do a final couple of runs with a stopwatch to a specific mark on the track to get a feel of what our race pace feels like. We call this  “dialling in race speed”.

There is no absolute science to this and you can play around with different distances at training like running the back straight as relaxed as possible to a set time which may be equivalent to your target 400/800m time for the first 150m.  One of the things I like to do is to fatigue the athlete first by doing 145m or 200m (not too fast), then get them to do a rolling start from the 200m mark to simulate the last 200m of their 400m race. This teaches good posture and mechanics under stress.

I encourage you to play around with your own race modelling at training and practice, dialling in your race speed, it will do wonders for your confidence on race day.