Racing Wisely: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Performing at Your Personal Best

Race wisely to achieve your personal best.

You’ve trained for your peak race for months. When the big day comes, how will you perform? All the training in the world is useless if you can’t execute your race plan and cope with unforeseen events, and subpar training can be overcome if you approach race day with the right attitude.

Whether you are new to racing or have been frustrated by underperformance or setbacks, Racing Wisely gives you tools—from the practical to the philosophical—to perform to the best of your ability. You’ll learn how to:

*Choose the right race for your personal strengths
*Test yourself in training to identify the right race pace and effort
*Write a race plan that helps you feel calm, prepared, and in control
*Manage your energy in the week, days, and hours before the race
*Warm up properly to race at your best
*Pace correctly for races of every distance
*Race for a personal-best time, or race competitively for place
*Recover physically and mentally to set up your next personal best

Coach Sage Rountree provides concrete tips and pacing tools for athletes racing endurance events including open-water races, bike races, track, road, and trail running, multisport races, and adventure races. Learn to plan and execute perfect pacing as you race to your personal best, and gain tools to make the best of whatever situation emerges on race day.

Learn to race wisely: to use your experience to grow stronger, to move faster, and to come through when it really counts.

Endorsements

“Sage Rountree has made a career of filling the gaps in guidance for endurance athletes, and she has done it again with this comprehensive and practical guide. Whether your usual race goal is to finish or to win, Sage’s collected wisdom will give you a huge boost toward consistently performing at your personal best in competition. Whatever is holding you back from racing as well as you could, you will find a way through it in these pages.”
—from the foreword by Matt Fitzgerald, author of Racing Weight and The New Rules of Marathon and Half Marathon Nutrition

“Runners spend so much time on training: week after week after week. Sometimes, it seems that that’s all we talk about. But the end goal is the race. Unfortunately, we don’t always put in the same dedication to planning a successful race as we do planning our training. Racing Wisely provides that often missing ingredient of race preparation and will help runners put all their great training to good use when it counts—the race. Sage Rountree understands performance, and this guide will prove invaluable for goal-oriented athletes.”
—Greg McMillan, coach, McMillan Running, and author of YOU (Only Faster)

“Racing Wisely delivers exactly what you hope for from a smart yogi-runner-triathlete: thoughtful insight about goals, intentions, and actions told in an engagingly conversational, down-to-earth style. I love that this book offers practical and philosophical advice for the whole spectrum of athletes, from serious goal-driven competitors to more experiential but just as passionate casual athletes. A great addition to the thinking runner’s library.”
—Tish Hamilton, Executive Editor, Runner’s World

Sage Rountree holds a PhD in English and has been certified as a coach by USA Triathlon, USA Cycling, and the Road Runners Club of America. A frequent presenter at coaching conferences, she is an experienced athlete herself, having competed in running races from the 4 × 400m relay to the ultramarathon and in triathlons from the super sprint to the Ironman. She raced for Team USA at the 2008 Age-Group World Triathlon Championships. Her other books include The Athlete's Guide to Yoga, The Athlete's Pocket Guide to Yoga, The Athlete's Guide to Recovery, and The Runner's Guide to Yoga. She writes on sports for Yoga Journal as the Active Yogi blogger, and on yoga for Runner's World, USA Triathlon Life, and many other publications. Sage lives with her husband and their two daughters in Chapel Hill, NC, where she co-owns the Carrboro and Durham Yoga Companies and enjoys the robust network of singletrack trail. Visit her online at sagerountree.com.