MAIN TOPIC: HOW CAN RUNNERS EXECUTE RACE SEASON?

As Oliver Hoare so excellently articulated during last week’s conversation, racing season is an opportunity to learn before our main event. This week on the A to Z Running podcast we unpack the practical application of a race season and give some tips on how to do it well. During this episode we answer the question, “How can runners execute a race season?”

Three things:

• Racing should be a season, not a one-off
• Training is different when building fitness vs. optimizing performance
• Opportunity to get outside yourself, so seize it!

Racing as a season

When we are able to view racing as a season and get a couple on the schedule, we can then utilize them to identify weaknesses. Oliver Hoare said in our previous podcast, “A bad race is better than a good training session.”

A few great questions to ask yourself,

• What did I do well in this race?
• Did I execute my race plan?
• Where is there room for growth?
• What will help me to improve in future races?

When we race as a season we also have the opportunity to practice key factors. Some factors are dealing with race anxiety and uncertainty, nutrition needs, drills, pre-race strides, activation, shoes, clothes, and more.

We also get the chance to experience many different race scenarios to prepare for all kinds of weather, terrain, and any number of challenges. All the experiences you have make you better prepared to visualize yourself in any scenario and overcome a variety of obstacles.

Train to Optimize Performance

When we are able to get feedback from race experiences we can allow the results to help inform us how to train to optimize for performance.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pulling off a Successful Race Season, 5 Things 

The key considerations:

• Training focused on coordinating fitness
• Training to fill gaps (identified by those races!)
• Training to add final elements (depends on focus race)
  • For marathon: economy stuff is likely an ingredient not much addressed
  • For shorter distances, true speed and anaerobic efficiency is necessary

We mentioned recently that we need to “train where we are, not where we want to be.” 

• The same is true for races. 
• We need to race WHERE WE ARE not where we want to be. 

We chip away at our goals step by step and if a distance runner knows anything, it’s that we can’t always see the finish line, but we are closer with every step.  When we are approaching a race that is not at our peak, we need to have proper goals for the race beyond the time goal.

Get outside yourself

Racing is challenging and vulnerable. We get outside ourselves when executing race season by jumping into races. Here are the benefits:

• Training is generally monotonous; racing is generally exciting.
• A way to make some of the more taxing efforts more interesting and rewarding
• A way to stay connected to running community (sense of community, shared experience)
• The easiest way to hold yourself accountable (frequent and transparent)
• Become vulnerable to your goal by placing yourself in situations where you care about the outcome.

Racing is a learned skill. We can improve our tactics, mentality, and training approach from information we gain from racing. If you’ve loved this episode “How can runners execute race season?” please subscribe for more free content!

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