Why not just race regularly instead of train?

Well, for us wknd warriors… most 5ks come w a entrance fee of 40-50.00.

so hard to race every wknd when u coughing up that much.

If you’re not elite but competitive, there’s nothing wrong with racing yourself into shape. Once you’re past peak, take a little down time and start over.

This is how Tom Osler used to train, actually.

I told you so.

That's what cross country and track ARE

With some other types of workouts thrown in, easy runs, camaraderie in the cold, inside jokes and talking crap while getting muddy trekking on greenways with a group of guys and girls you love hanging out with

Many of the Kenyan training groups will have large group training runs with world class pros at the front and everyone else just trying to keep up as long as they can. They are going all in on these runs to try and work their way up and get a chance to go to race in Europe or Asia for money. Of course, fast runners are a dime a dozen in Kenya and burning out a high percentage of your training group is no big deal. But if you want to be able to perform in a race when you are going all in on effort, you are also going to need to go to the well sometimes when you train. If you have a hard time doing that with just a stop watch and some running buddies, maybe racing is a good way to train.

They used to have weekly summer XC races that would be about 5k-8k. Races were in the afternoon after everyone got off work. I ran the series one year and really got a pretty big boost going out every week for about 8 weeks and just going for it once a week. My training group would also do a summer program of group workouts on XC trails. Of course, the better runners in the group would lead the pack and try to out run each other. Same effect. I would get a nice boost in fitness just going all out on a fartlek or hill circuit chasing runners who are faster than me.

Of course, coaches will all tell you that you have to have the perfect training plan with all the bells and whistles in order to really maximize your fitness and improvement. And running a workout too fast will ruin you. But there is definitely something to just going out, running as hard as you can and chasing other runners that makes you a better runner.

You could do something like this article suggests:

runnersworld.com

Always Ready to Race

With the right training schedule, you can be race-fit throughout the year

Open link

Although I suppose you want to race even more (and harder) than that. A full year of weekly max effort races, if you can find weekly races, would probably burn almost anyone out.

You don't have to run 'all out' in every race.

I downvoted this "Big Caboose" but secretly wonder if he might be right. We raced so hard in every race. I never ran anything other than all-out. This includes my interval sessions.

I must have been doing something wrong to be going so hard and still being so slow (I am not talented but not freakishly so).

If you’re racing a lot you need to adjust your training accordingly. Varying the distance of those races is important to.

Race yourself into shape? It pretty much worked as a high school miler, running about 10 meets each spring. The coach didn't ask us to do anything, he was working with the high jumpers.

The older distance guys would all run this 2.2 mile course and call it a day. I'd sneak back to the track when they headed to the locker room and ran 3 x 400 a few times a week alone. I wasn't great but it was easy to beat my team mates.

Then we got a real coach the next year. We'd run hills and intervals. We'd still run a lot of races, which was key, but we went from guys who could dip under 5:00, to 20-30 seconds faster. Hey, I guess training does work!

Fox you shady dog, are your sub 2:20s assisted by kenyan smarties???

Big “if”, fake fox. It’s amazing how much great information on training is out there, yet people refuse to listen. Is there another sport where people spend so much time every week without really understanding what they’re doing?