
This one might surprise you a bit.
*X Lose 100g in weight. That should gain you just over 1 second over the 5k – although if you try to lose too much weight in less than a week you will probably lose either water or muscle so I’m not sure it would help really!!
But the rule of thumb holds for every 0.5kg you lose in weight you will gain at least 6 seconds…other things being equal (which they are not)
This weight-loss + time-gain effect links with earlier tips to get all the old food from yesterday out of your body before the race.
So, going back to hydration: 1 litre of excess fluid will cost you 12 secs!
**BUT**
If you lose weight by dehydrating yourself…you will be SLOWER – here you have lost fluid NOT lost EXCESS fluid.
Also if you do some silly diet you will likely lose MUSCLE MASS AND YOU WILL BE SLOWER as you are less powerful.
All the suggestions are starred:
*** 3 stars. IMHO it will work
** 2 stars. It might work
* 1 star. Can’t hurt
X 1 cross. It CAN hurt if done wrong.
All 50 tips are shown here as a series of posts : https://the5krunner.com/tag/how-to-get-a-5k-pb/ or on twitter using #howtogeta5kpb. They are all SHORT-TERM tips that will work in the next week or so with varying degrees of success.