Why do runners train so much and race so little ?
Isn't the point of training so you can race and compete, etc ?
Why do runners train so much and race so little ?
Isn't the point of training so you can race and compete, etc ?
You have to train a lot to do well when you compete. Competition disrupts your training schedule, so it's best to pick and choose your competitions to maximize your performance when you do compete.
Who are you writing about?
Jo Jo beans wrote:
Why do runners train so much and race so little ?
Isn't the point of training so you can race and compete, etc ?
Professional Runners- competitions tend to screw up their training cycles. Additionally, many of the major competitions are overseas, which disrupts their day-to-day lives.
Recreational Runners- Entry fees for many of the major marathons are hundreds of dollars. Entry fees even for local 5Ks can end up over $30. Additionally, unlike many other sports (Football, Baseball, etc.) local "leagues" are nonexistent, so you most likely need to drive some distance to find races. Many small communities don't have races at all. Some that do will usually only have them on Thanksgiving, July 4th, etc. Even larger communities will have no more than 4-5 races a year.
In America, it's because track is a kids' after school activity like marching band. They race all the time.
But other than that, there just aren't enough races for anyone to race much. Even for pros it involves traveling all over the place, which is impractical for a sport with little money. For everyone else, there's mostly just road races available, which big entry fees for organizing, clearing a route, hiring police and other logistics.
Found one!
liker of posts wrote:
want to do well wrote:Competition disrupts your training schedule...
This attitude absolutely baffles me. That's like saying your wife disrupts your marriage. Isn't the reason you have a training schedule is so you can compete? As another poster said, the tail's wagging the dog here.
The goal is to compete well at particular races. If my goal is to run well at NCAA XC nationals, I'm better off putting in a ton of miles over the summer so that I can race well when it's time rather than racing a ton over the summer.
It's all about balance. Yes, the ultimate point of running is to race, but you have to do solid training in order to perform well when you race. If you're constantly modifying your training schedule in order to race, you won't get sustained periods of solid training, and then you won't race as well as possible when it's time.
liker of posts wrote:
finder of hobby joggers wrote:Found one!
Oh wow, you got me. I feel so guilty... Eye roll...
Care to make a counter point? Or are you just here to insult people?
P.s. I bet you're a hobby jogger too. Does running pay your bills?
I'm mostly here to insult people.
But,
The point is that competing very frequently is not conducive to competing well when it matters. This is accepted by top athletes and coaches at every level from high school up to the pros. A pro (or even a top collegian or high schooler) has bigger goals than just "getting out and competing". He/she wants to win a state title, an Olympic berth, a medal, etc. The way to do that is to plan the season around performing at the meet that matters. When there's more on the line than just running for fun and setting PRs, you'd be a fool not to plan the season carefully. People who try to race as much as possible are either hobby joggers, kids, or poor Kenyans trying to scratch a living off prize money.
races are better/more fun ways to get in shape than workouts. that's usaully how i get back into shapethere's so many every weekend and usually you can get in for free if you are fast enough and just email a few weeks before. i rarely pay for races, even marathons and i'm not that fastdo you live somewhere rural or suburban?if so, that sucks
liker of posts wrote:
want to do well wrote:Competition disrupts your training schedule...
This attitude absolutely baffles me. That's like saying your wife disrupts your marriage. Isn't the reason you have a training schedule is so you can compete? As another poster said, the tail's wagging the dog here.
I had my best summer in years last year. I raced 37 times. I had about 15 "goal" races that were in a series. As said before, the best training is the most specific and that is racing. The key is to run most other days easy. I peaked about 12 weeks of racing in and held the peak until fall as I kept moving up in distance.
Especially for high school, I have never been in favor of training through big invites or only running kids a handful of times. I think I raced 16-18 times in Xc and in track I would quadruple some meets early in the season. Always ran the best at the end of the season.
Racing has a certain intensity to it that can't be replicated in workouts. If HS and collegiate coaches could effectively harness this, they would be better off.
However, racing too frequently dulls the intensity and purity of racing, so that an athlete doesn't get those precious pre-race butterflies when it counts.
Overall, racing more would benefit high school and college runners.
random letters wrote:
Please explain to me how skipping a race to stay home and jog better prepares you to race than actually racing.
It has more to do with the schedule disruption than the race itself. A week with a race is structured entirely different than a week with no race. If I'm racing on a Saturday, I am abbreviating my Thursday workout and cutting my Friday mileage way back. Depending on the distance of the race, I might have to do a recovery on Sunday instead of a long run as well. So it's not just a matter of racing vs. working out on Saturday. It's a pretty major decrease in volume.
Of course, this assumes that I'm not just training though the race. But if I'm not doing everything I can to race well, then what's the point of racing at all?
Train,Train, get injured. Train,Train, get injured. Wait until next year.
And then when the race finally happens there is some reason why things didn't work out.
Racing just isn't done enough these days
random letters wrote:
want to do well wrote:It has more to do with the schedule disruption than the race itself. A week with a race is structured entirely different than a week with no race. If I'm racing on a Saturday, I am abbreviating my Thursday workout and cutting my Friday mileage way back. Depending on the distance of the race, I might have to do a recovery on Sunday instead of a long run as well. So it's not just a matter of racing vs. working out on Saturday. It's a pretty major decrease in volume.
Of course, this assumes that I'm not just training though the race. But if I'm not doing everything I can to race well, then what's the point of racing at all?
This attitude displays so much of what's wrong with today's runners. You're afraid to race if everything isn't perfect.
Seconded. The more times you race the more bad races you'll have but you'll also increase your chances of having a great one.
For the pros, all the good money is concentrated in a few big events--world marathon majors, diamond league, Nationals, WCs and Olympics. If you are racing between these events, you are wasting your time and risking injury. The prize money at lesser events does not compare to the big event's prize money, appearance fees and sponsor cash. For the amateurs, most are chasing PRs instead of wins. If you race all the time, you plateau and do not see much improvement. It is more rewarding to woodshed for a few months and then take a shot at a pr.
HRE wrote:
random letters wrote:This attitude displays so much of what's wrong with today's runners. You're afraid to race if everything isn't perfect.
Seconded. The more times you race the more bad races you'll have but you'll also increase your chances of having a great one.
Most of the elites who race sparingly are never in the money anyway.
How many checks has someone like Ritz or Hall actually picked up in their career?
I think for most pros the prime sources of money are their shoe contracts and in some cases appearance money. The injury thing is a red herring. Guys like Rodgers, Benji Durden, Ron Hill, Ron Clarke, raced loads and were fine. Shorter was fragile and had lots of problems late in his career. George Young once said something along the lines of you can talk all you want about speed work and hard training but there is no better preparation for racing than racing.
And recreational runners? In college we'd race about a dozen times during cross country season and most of us were faster at the end than we were at the start.
In part because although there are so many races these days, there are so few legit ones. For example, there are about 20 in my city this weekend but almost all of them are color runs or untimed or short courses or have none of the local fast guys show up. You're paying $40 for a tempo run.
http://www.uwb.edu/5krunjamin wrote:
In part because although there are so many races these days, there are so few legit ones. For example, there are about 20 in my city this weekend but almost all of them are color runs or untimed or short courses or have none of the local fast guys show up. You're paying $40 for a tempo run.
$30
15:52 won last year
Can you tempo that fast?