77. Why “Go Out Slow” Isn't a Race Plan
You promised yourself you’d go out slow. And then the race started.
Everyone around you takes off, and suddenly you’re running faster than you planned because you don’t want to get stuck behind slower runners or feel like you’re already falling behind. Before you know it, the race strategy you meant to follow has disappeared in the first few miles.
In this episode, I’m breaking down why telling yourself to “go out slow” isn’t enough to keep you from getting swept up in the chaos at the start of an ultra. I explain why the problem isn’t necessarily starting fast or slow, but failing to decide in advance how you want to run those first miles and how that decision fits into your bigger race strategy.
You’ll learn how to plan for the pressures you’ll face when everyone else takes off, make intentional decisions instead of reacting to the runners around you, and start running your own race from the very first step. I also share three questions to help you build a smarter plan for those opening miles so you can stay calmer, race steadier, and avoid paying for first-mile chaos later in the race.
My 1:1 Mental Mastery Coaching for Ultrarunners is a six-month coaching program where we build the mental skills experienced ultrarunners use to handle difficult races well. Schedule a consult call to learn more here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How first-mile chaos can pull you away from your strategy before you realize it.
Why starting fast isn’t necessarily the mistake, but doing it without consciously deciding can be.
How the way you handle the first few miles can affect the rest of your race.
Why you need to understand how your opening strategy supports your bigger race goal.
Three questions to help you plan the first few miles before you reach the starting line.
Why planning for the chaos can help you start your race calmer and more in control.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Episodes Related to Why “Go Out Slow” Isn't a Race Plan:
Ep #20. The Simple Training Plan for the Mental Side of Ultra Running
Ep #24. Make Worry a Strategic Ultra Advantage: Race Strategy
Full Episode Transcript:
You know the saying, "Go out slow." You've probably promised yourself you would many times. So, why does that promise break the moment the race starts?
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 77. This one is going to be a fun little dose of race strategy, which I love. I do three big things with clients, three big buckets of things with clients: I teach them the mental skills, all the mental skills they need to run their full potential; I help them work through whatever specific fears and struggles they are facing—that's very personalized that way; and the third one, the one that I haven't talked about much on here, is helping them plan their races, full-on race strategy.
I do it in a very unique way. And the reason I haven't talked about it much, even though it's one of my favorite things, is that I've been building a surprise for you all. I am opening up a new related service in the next couple of weeks, and this episode is a warm-up to that. So, stay tuned.
Today, we are starting right at the beginning of a race: the chaos of the first few miles. Now, I've stood at a lot of starting lines, and I can tell you how you handle those first miles sets up your whole race. And it's probably not what you think. It's not just "go out slow."
Picture yourself here: the RD just said, "Go." Everyone around you surges forward at a sprint. The race is on, the clock is running. You're surrounded by a sea of other runners, and you're trying to go as fast or faster than them because you only have a short open distance on road to the trailhead where it narrows suddenly down to single file on single-track trail.
And you know what happens there: the whole pack just jams up into this completely jumbled stop, there's not even a line. So, you're thinking, "I've got to go out fast now to get ahead of the slower people before I get stuck behind them on the trail. And I need to bank some time on cutoff, and I don't want to get left behind." Because you are not getting stuck in a long conga line this time! You promise yourself you're not. You're not making that mistake again. This time, you swear is going to be different.
But you also promised yourself you wouldn't start out too fast. You've got a lot of hours and a lot of miles ahead. And slowing down is the last thing you feel like doing right now when you're finally keeping up. You don't want to give up that spot that you fought so hard for in these first few yards. Two promises you made to yourself, and you can't keep both of them.
So, what do you do? The thing you want, or the smart thing? Well, you go back and forth in your head as you run. Do you keep sprinting to the trailhead so maybe you don't get trapped in a conga line, or do you slow down to a sane pace now and end up behind everybody, maybe even last?
And here's the crux: you never actually decide. You just keep running along, going back and forth in your head, doing what everyone else is doing, trying to beat as many runners to the trailhead as you can, almost by instinct, and every promise to start out easy just goes right out the window.
You look up and see all those runners ahead of you, so many of them. You already feel behind, you already feel slow, and you all have just started! So, you tell yourself, "I just need to put a few people behind me, get comfortable into the middle of the pack where it feels safe, then I'll relax and settle into a steady pace."
But the second you hit the trail, you're in a slow conga line anyway, which you can't stand. So, you get ready to pass, and it's like passing on a two-lane road with no shoulder. You tuck in way too close behind the runner ahead of you, and you kind of pull out on the side to see if it's safe. And it's not safe, so you back off. And you do that once or twice. Then you get frustrated and just go for it, even though it's not really safe—and thank goodness you don't fall. So, you get a minute or two of open trail that you just paid for, and then you're stuck behind the next conga line.
And the miles go by while you keep waiting for the moment that you can finally settle into that steady pace that you promised yourself. But that moment doesn't come, because here's what happens while you're waiting for that moment to come: you burn a ton of nervous energy and physical energy on a pace and a strategy that you never chose. Remember, you were just trying to go pell-mell to the trailhead to get in front of as many people as possible; you never decided to slow down.
So, when the pack finally does thin out and you can run your own race, you find yourself with a new problem: your heart rate's been way higher than it should have been, your legs feel heavier than they should at mile, let's say, five, and now you have to fix that before you can even think about settling into your forever pace.
The problem here is that you don't have a race plan that addresses this first-mile chaos. You know cutoff pace, you know where the tough climbs are, you know not to go out too fast, but you don't have a plan for this: the start of the race. Because it doesn't seem important. I mean, it's just the first few miles, right? Very small in the total mileage. Doesn't really even matter, and you're fresh, so it doesn't really matter how you run them, right? You rarely even remember this part of the race. Think back—I bet you don't.
But it's incredibly important. The way you start the race lays the groundwork for the rest of it. Without a plan, you're deciding in the middle of the chaos, which means the chaos decides for you. You get swept up in the first-mile chaos in everybody else's race out of fear of losing time and falling behind, because in the moment that seems like the smartest thing to do.
And it doesn't stop with the first few miles. You stay in the same reaction mode that you started in the whole way, always responding to something. Something happens, something happens: a passing runner, a blister, losing cushion on cutoff. You never really relax and settle into your own race because you didn't start out that way. So, you carry that early chaos with you, and in the second half of the race, you crash. There's lots of walking—slow walking, survival walking, death marching—while you kick yourself because you didn't keep your promise to start slow.
What you need to do instead is race intentionally from the very first step. Stop winging it and relying on luck to just carry you through the rest of the race. However you choose to run those first few miles, sticking with your plan in that chaos does take a lot of focus. Most runners intend to start slow, even if that's slower than the rest of the pack—that's what they tell themselves. And that's the hardest strategy to hold. You can't just promise yourself you will, because in that moment every incentive, all your feelings, all your emotions are pulling you the other way.
Instinctively, you want to pass people, beat the conga line, feel safe in the middle of the pack, don't be left behind. The payoff for holding back is hours down the trail where you can't see it. This is why so many runners follow the chaos instead. It's such a delayed payoff. So, you need to see that payoff before you start. You need to know how your plan for the first few miles fits into your bigger plan, and how it's part of the solution for hitting your goal. It's not just something that you're promising yourself; it is part of your plan. Like, how those first few minutes that you lose to that conga line early in the race will save you hours of death marching at the end.
You've got to plan your race. And I'm not talking about a spreadsheet full of splits and numbers, past numbers, current numbers, whatever, or knowing cutoff pace. I'm talking about a plan that covers all the challenges like this that you expect to face and how you're going to deal with them, like what you're going to do when everyone sprints at the start. These first miles are your first test of the race.
That's why race crafting, helping my clients build a race plan that covers every challenge they'll face, is one of my favorite things to do. And that's why they show up feeling calm at the starting line, all of them. Here's what matters here: the mistake isn't sprinting to the trailhead—some runners should, some runners want to, that fits into their race plan. The mistake is sprinting because everyone else is, without actually deciding that's what you want to do.
If you plan to surge to the trailhead, you also plan where you're going to back off and recover from that surge. If you plan to hang back and start slow, you plan what you'll tell yourself when the pack disappears out of sight. Either way, you're running your race instead of running everyone else's race. And you make that decision before you're standing at the starting line, not in the middle of the chaos, because when you already know how your strategy pays off, it is so much easier to stick with it.
So, here are three helpful questions to get you started on this:
First question: To hit my goal, what exactly do I need to do in the first few miles?
Second question: Why is it okay if everyone else does something different in these first few miles?
And third question: How much time does a conga line actually cost me, and where do I get it back?
Here's what that looks like in real life: One of my clients wanted to run a sub-24-hour at Tunnel Hill 100, and she decided that the way she wanted to do it was a run-walk from the very start. We made that decision together. We ran the numbers, and they showed that she could do it. But Tunnel Hill is a wide, fast course on finely crushed gravel. Records are set there; it's fast. And I knew everyone would be sprinting at the start.
So, there's no trailhead conga line at Tunnel Hill. It's nice and wide, none of that. But she'd still be facing that first-mile chaos, because everybody was going to take off to bank time in the cool of the morning on that nice, cushy trail, leaving her behind, maybe even last. So, we talked through exactly what that would be like: how it would feel to watch everyone run off and leave her, to be absolutely last, and the kind of thoughts that would show up in that moment, like, "I'm already behind. I'm not going to be able to make it," the urge that she would feel to keep up instead of running her plan, and most important, how she'd handle all of this by reminding herself that her plan already accounted for this, and that the runners flying past her were spending energy that she was still going to have at mile 70.
We mapped out exactly how that run-walk was going to work from the very start and how it would pay off later in the race so she could see it. So, because she could see it, she had no trouble sticking to her plan, which she did, and with zero drama, got her sub-24. In our post-race evaluation, she told me that having the plan kept her calm and grounded from the start. She expected the chaos, and she was ready for it. It was chaos for sure for everybody caught up in it, but for her, it was no big deal.
So, here's what changes when your plan covers those first chaotic miles: You start in control from the very first step. You're making decisions instead of reacting. You run your plan, your own race, from the word "go," instead of just getting pulled off of your plan immediately. And that adds up to a smarter, steadier race that's faster overall, not just in the first few miles. You finish more reliably—no burning out and crashing later, no run all-out and then death march to the finish, like one of my friends used to say when I was starting out ultrarunning. Less panic and a lot less time redlining your heart rate before you've even settled into the race. And this time, you keep your promise to yourself.
No matter how hard you want to race or how big your goal is, you'll enjoy it more from the very start when you plan for that chaos. And if you'd like help building a plan like that, stay tuned, because the new service I mentioned is opening up in the next couple of weeks.
So, here's the question I'm going to leave you with—you got three questions earlier, here's the one I'm going to leave you with: You know the right answer to this, but I want you to really sit with it and see what changes: Do you want to win the first mile, or your race?
All right, y'all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye!
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 77. This one is going to be a fun little dose of race strategy, which I love. I do three big things with clients, three big buckets of things with clients: I teach them the mental skills, all the mental skills they need to run their full potential; I help them work through whatever specific fears and struggles they are facing—that's very personalized that way; and the third one, the one that I haven't talked about much on here, is helping them plan their races, full-on race strategy.
I do it in a very unique way. And the reason I haven't talked about it much, even though it's one of my favorite things, is that I've been building a surprise for you all. I am opening up a new related service in the next couple of weeks, and this episode is a warm-up to that. So, stay tuned.
Today, we are starting right at the beginning of a race: the chaos of the first few miles. Now, I've stood at a lot of starting lines, and I can tell you how you handle those first miles sets up your whole race. And it's probably not what you think. It's not just "go out slow."
Picture yourself here: the RD just said, "Go." Everyone around you surges forward at a sprint. The race is on, the clock is running. You're surrounded by a sea of other runners, and you're trying to go as fast or faster than them because you only have a short open distance on road to the trailhead where it narrows suddenly down to single file on single-track trail.
And you know what happens there: the whole pack just jams up into this completely jumbled stop, there's not even a line. So, you're thinking, "I've got to go out fast now to get ahead of the slower people before I get stuck behind them on the trail. And I need to bank some time on cutoff, and I don't want to get left behind." Because you are not getting stuck in a long conga line this time! You promise yourself you're not. You're not making that mistake again. This time, you swear is going to be different.
But you also promised yourself you wouldn't start out too fast. You've got a lot of hours and a lot of miles ahead. And slowing down is the last thing you feel like doing right now when you're finally keeping up. You don't want to give up that spot that you fought so hard for in these first few yards. Two promises you made to yourself, and you can't keep both of them.
So, what do you do? The thing you want, or the smart thing? Well, you go back and forth in your head as you run. Do you keep sprinting to the trailhead so maybe you don't get trapped in a conga line, or do you slow down to a sane pace now and end up behind everybody, maybe even last?
And here's the crux: you never actually decide. You just keep running along, going back and forth in your head, doing what everyone else is doing, trying to beat as many runners to the trailhead as you can, almost by instinct, and every promise to start out easy just goes right out the window.
You look up and see all those runners ahead of you, so many of them. You already feel behind, you already feel slow, and you all have just started! So, you tell yourself, "I just need to put a few people behind me, get comfortable into the middle of the pack where it feels safe, then I'll relax and settle into a steady pace."
But the second you hit the trail, you're in a slow conga line anyway, which you can't stand. So, you get ready to pass, and it's like passing on a two-lane road with no shoulder. You tuck in way too close behind the runner ahead of you, and you kind of pull out on the side to see if it's safe. And it's not safe, so you back off. And you do that once or twice. Then you get frustrated and just go for it, even though it's not really safe—and thank goodness you don't fall. So, you get a minute or two of open trail that you just paid for, and then you're stuck behind the next conga line.
And the miles go by while you keep waiting for the moment that you can finally settle into that steady pace that you promised yourself. But that moment doesn't come, because here's what happens while you're waiting for that moment to come: you burn a ton of nervous energy and physical energy on a pace and a strategy that you never chose. Remember, you were just trying to go pell-mell to the trailhead to get in front of as many people as possible; you never decided to slow down.
So, when the pack finally does thin out and you can run your own race, you find yourself with a new problem: your heart rate's been way higher than it should have been, your legs feel heavier than they should at mile, let's say, five, and now you have to fix that before you can even think about settling into your forever pace.
The problem here is that you don't have a race plan that addresses this first-mile chaos. You know cutoff pace, you know where the tough climbs are, you know not to go out too fast, but you don't have a plan for this: the start of the race. Because it doesn't seem important. I mean, it's just the first few miles, right? Very small in the total mileage. Doesn't really even matter, and you're fresh, so it doesn't really matter how you run them, right? You rarely even remember this part of the race. Think back—I bet you don't.
But it's incredibly important. The way you start the race lays the groundwork for the rest of it. Without a plan, you're deciding in the middle of the chaos, which means the chaos decides for you. You get swept up in the first-mile chaos in everybody else's race out of fear of losing time and falling behind, because in the moment that seems like the smartest thing to do.
And it doesn't stop with the first few miles. You stay in the same reaction mode that you started in the whole way, always responding to something. Something happens, something happens: a passing runner, a blister, losing cushion on cutoff. You never really relax and settle into your own race because you didn't start out that way. So, you carry that early chaos with you, and in the second half of the race, you crash. There's lots of walking—slow walking, survival walking, death marching—while you kick yourself because you didn't keep your promise to start slow.
What you need to do instead is race intentionally from the very first step. Stop winging it and relying on luck to just carry you through the rest of the race. However you choose to run those first few miles, sticking with your plan in that chaos does take a lot of focus. Most runners intend to start slow, even if that's slower than the rest of the pack—that's what they tell themselves. And that's the hardest strategy to hold. You can't just promise yourself you will, because in that moment every incentive, all your feelings, all your emotions are pulling you the other way.
Instinctively, you want to pass people, beat the conga line, feel safe in the middle of the pack, don't be left behind. The payoff for holding back is hours down the trail where you can't see it. This is why so many runners follow the chaos instead. It's such a delayed payoff. So, you need to see that payoff before you start. You need to know how your plan for the first few miles fits into your bigger plan, and how it's part of the solution for hitting your goal. It's not just something that you're promising yourself; it is part of your plan. Like, how those first few minutes that you lose to that conga line early in the race will save you hours of death marching at the end.
You've got to plan your race. And I'm not talking about a spreadsheet full of splits and numbers, past numbers, current numbers, whatever, or knowing cutoff pace. I'm talking about a plan that covers all the challenges like this that you expect to face and how you're going to deal with them, like what you're going to do when everyone sprints at the start. These first miles are your first test of the race.
That's why race crafting, helping my clients build a race plan that covers every challenge they'll face, is one of my favorite things to do. And that's why they show up feeling calm at the starting line, all of them. Here's what matters here: the mistake isn't sprinting to the trailhead—some runners should, some runners want to, that fits into their race plan. The mistake is sprinting because everyone else is, without actually deciding that's what you want to do.
If you plan to surge to the trailhead, you also plan where you're going to back off and recover from that surge. If you plan to hang back and start slow, you plan what you'll tell yourself when the pack disappears out of sight. Either way, you're running your race instead of running everyone else's race. And you make that decision before you're standing at the starting line, not in the middle of the chaos, because when you already know how your strategy pays off, it is so much easier to stick with it.
So, here are three helpful questions to get you started on this:
First question: To hit my goal, what exactly do I need to do in the first few miles?
Second question: Why is it okay if everyone else does something different in these first few miles?
And third question: How much time does a conga line actually cost me, and where do I get it back?
Here's what that looks like in real life: One of my clients wanted to run a sub-24-hour at Tunnel Hill 100, and she decided that the way she wanted to do it was a run-walk from the very start. We made that decision together. We ran the numbers, and they showed that she could do it. But Tunnel Hill is a wide, fast course on finely crushed gravel. Records are set there; it's fast. And I knew everyone would be sprinting at the start.
So, there's no trailhead conga line at Tunnel Hill. It's nice and wide, none of that. But she'd still be facing that first-mile chaos, because everybody was going to take off to bank time in the cool of the morning on that nice, cushy trail, leaving her behind, maybe even last. So, we talked through exactly what that would be like: how it would feel to watch everyone run off and leave her, to be absolutely last, and the kind of thoughts that would show up in that moment, like, "I'm already behind. I'm not going to be able to make it," the urge that she would feel to keep up instead of running her plan, and most important, how she'd handle all of this by reminding herself that her plan already accounted for this, and that the runners flying past her were spending energy that she was still going to have at mile 70.
We mapped out exactly how that run-walk was going to work from the very start and how it would pay off later in the race so she could see it. So, because she could see it, she had no trouble sticking to her plan, which she did, and with zero drama, got her sub-24. In our post-race evaluation, she told me that having the plan kept her calm and grounded from the start. She expected the chaos, and she was ready for it. It was chaos for sure for everybody caught up in it, but for her, it was no big deal.
So, here's what changes when your plan covers those first chaotic miles: You start in control from the very first step. You're making decisions instead of reacting. You run your plan, your own race, from the word "go," instead of just getting pulled off of your plan immediately. And that adds up to a smarter, steadier race that's faster overall, not just in the first few miles. You finish more reliably—no burning out and crashing later, no run all-out and then death march to the finish, like one of my friends used to say when I was starting out ultrarunning. Less panic and a lot less time redlining your heart rate before you've even settled into the race. And this time, you keep your promise to yourself.
No matter how hard you want to race or how big your goal is, you'll enjoy it more from the very start when you plan for that chaos. And if you'd like help building a plan like that, stay tuned, because the new service I mentioned is opening up in the next couple of weeks.
So, here's the question I'm going to leave you with—you got three questions earlier, here's the one I'm going to leave you with: You know the right answer to this, but I want you to really sit with it and see what changes: Do you want to win the first mile, or your race?
All right, y'all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye!
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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