How much racing is too much racing?

Race as much as you can. It builds mental toughness. It will benefit you later.

Over-racing can be a problem, although four doesn't seem too crazy. Is it one each week? I would pick a handful of races from those meets that are the most important: maybe the final meet, one against a rival, whatever. Pick those races and run them all out and treat the other ones like workouts. Run them hard but not balls to the wall.

Negative Splits wrote:

Over-racing can be a problem, although four doesn't seem too crazy. Is it one each week? I would pick a handful of races from those meets that are the most important: maybe the final meet, one against a rival, whatever. Pick those races and run them all out and treat the other ones like workouts. Run them hard but not balls to the wall.

Yeah, they're consecutive weekend meets. The last one is the big one, obviously. How valuable is doubling in terms of potentially building fitness? Or does doubling just help you get use to doubling?

I know I'm a little bit older than some other posters and that things were done differently in my collegiate days so my view on this is colored by that; but I simply cannot relate to treating any race as a workout. When I, or any athlete I coach, laced up the spikes or flats, puts on the singlet, and toes the line, I expect a full race effort. I fear that half hearted efforts in race setting beget half hearted efforts in race setting. Racing is a mindset as much as it is a physical act. Running hard hurts. We all look to cut deals with ourselves during the pain. Turning a race into "a good workout" becomes an easier deal to cut when you've treated races as workouts in the past.

Again, I understand that this is my early-90s college bias impacting my view some, and I get that most view racing every week to be detrimental to improvement; but I would prefer an athlete work it out either his coach that he doesn't race at a particular meet than have him race at less than a max effort.

I agree with the previous poster who said that races should always be run with a serious, give it 110% attitude. However, as someone who lived in the Northeast in high school, I can tell you that doubling back with a good 2 mile race can do wonders, especially if you are used to having to run on poorly-plowed streets, with no access to an indoor track for workouts during the week. Why not try to concentrate on either the mile or the 800 as your primary event, psychologically, and run the 2 mile as a bonus? You can run it as hard as you want, but if you already ran a race, you know you won't be running your best 2 mile, so the pressure is off. I also advise running a shakeout run the next day for active recovery, that always helps if you end up racing the mile and two mile every week, like I used to.

Yeah I mean I'm obviously not gonna show up to whatever that first race is and not try and run as well and as fast as I can. Like I said, indoor is a short season.

I'm just trying to figure out if after my mile I double back and run an 800 or 3k, how much benefit does that do for your training? Because it's obviously not going to be as fast as it could've been fresh. And mentally if I'm not sure whether or not I'll even run it, my focus is already more on being competitive in the first race not the second.