Once you have established a running regime and have improved your fitness levels, you may wish to maintain interest and enthusiasm by entering a race. To be successful at the distance chosen you will need to plan your training. The main factors to bear in mind are to ensure that you can complete the distance and that you run the distance at a competitive speed – for you.

Assuming that your first race is not to be over the full marathon distance, you should practise running further than the race distance, but at a slower speed than your intended race pace. For instance, if your race is five kilometres (about three miles) and you wish to complete it in about 25 minutes, you might aim to run eight kilometres (five miles) in an hour. For a ten kilometre (six mile) race, on your ‘long’ training runs you might aim to run up to 16 kilometres (ten miles) in around two hours. Make sure that you wear comfortable, well-cushioned shoes when you begin to increase your mileage.

An alternative to running these distances on the road is to run for a similar length of time ‘off road’. It is unlikely that you will run as far as you would on the road, but the extra resistance met off road will develop strength. It also gives variety to your training and puts less pressure on your joints and muscles, especially if you wear trail or fell shoes designed for the purpose.

The intention of such training is to increase your stamina and endurance, so that on race day you are confident of achieving the distance. Make sure that you build sufficient rest periods into your routine after your longer runs so that your body can recover, especially if your muscles are stiff or sore.

Relatively slow ‘over distance’ running is unlikely to improve your speed. To do this you should practise running relatively short distances, but at a faster speed i.e. speed work.

Speed work can take a variety of forms. One of the most popular and effective is fartlek, which involves injecting short sections speed running (100-200 metres) into a steady run. On a road run, for instance, you might put in a burst of speed between a set of lamp-posts, before settling back to your normal pace to recover. You can do something similar in the park where you can mark the start and finish of your speed section with benches or markings on a football pitch. To begin with just run how you feel. Run as fast as you like! Enjoy the sensation of running faster and take plenty of time to recover. You may run only two or three speed sections within your training run, with much longer sections of recovery. As you improve you may want to increase the number of speed sections and shorten the recovery periods.

Tempo running can also be used to improve your race speed. Tempo running involves taking yourself out of your ‘comfort zone’ pace (where you can talk as you run) to run faster for a sustained period. Your pace will not be as fast as for fartlek, but your heart and lungs should be working harder to gain some cardio-vascular improvement. Initially you should aim to run at tempo for about a quarter of the distance of your run, gradually increasing this proportion to a half, or more. This sort of tempo running will give you an idea of the sort of pace you can sustain during a race. As the date of the event approaches, do your training in the running shoes that you intend to use for the race. You might even buy some specialist race shoes.

By preparing in this way, you should be confident that you will complete your first race at a competitive pace. You should also enjoy the event more as you are thoroughly prepared.