Hard training and racing your workouts

Johnfrog11 wrote:

I'Ve read a lot here that racing your workouts is bad. But what's the difference between racing your workouts and just good hard work ?

In a 2:07 marathon you do all 26 miles at 4:50 pace. If you are in Boulder drop in and see Steve Jones.

I don't like the term "racing a workout," but I do tell my runners that how they feel in practice should be how they feel in races.

Practice feeling hungry, strong, and ready to unleash a big kick in practice, you will do it in a race.

Practice running balls out and blowing up at the end of a rep, you will do it in a race.

I realized myself that do many years I was doing 5 x 1 mile repeats in 5:20 with 2 minute rest, yet I was running 28:30 8ks. It was because I was running those repeats with splits of 75-75-80-90.

So what happened in my races? I would go out in 5:10-5:20 pace, and then by the end of the race I would be hitting 6:00 miles.

As in practice, so to in the race.

Hit pace almost all reps. Time trial the last rep

Kid from somewhere wrote:

Hit pace almost all reps. Time trial the last rep

Not bad advice. I usually start workouts a little slower than prescribed and try to work into pace after a couple of miles or repeats. The last half of the workout I try to run a little faster than prescribed and the last couple of miles or repeats I run hard. I race the same way.

That's the ticket wrote:

I don't like the term "racing a workout," but I do tell my runners that how they feel in practice should be how they feel in races.

Practice feeling hungry, strong, and ready to unleash a big kick in practice, you will do it in a race.

Practice running balls out and blowing up at the end of a rep, you will do it in a race.

I realized myself that do many years I was doing 5 x 1 mile repeats in 5:20 with 2 minute rest, yet I was running 28:30 8ks. It was because I was running those repeats with splits of 75-75-80-90.

So what happened in my races? I would go out in 5:10-5:20 pace, and then by the end of the race I would be hitting 6:00 miles.

As in practice, so to in the race.

That's interesting that you could keep hitting 5:20 on your reps after dying at the end each time.

I like to finish each workout feeling like I could run atleast 2 or 3 more reps if I had to.

Johnfrog11 wrote:

I'Ve read a lot here that racing your workouts is bad. But what's the difference between racing your workouts and just good hard work ?

There is no actual difference in my experience.

I used this method to screw up my NYC marathon.

I now have a 17 page thread trying to make sense of my stupid training debacle.

I am in denial about racing 20 mile long runs at marathon race pace for 4 weeks in a row.

How could I be so stupid?

I agree with this. My weakness in the past has been my speed. I'm good at endurance.

So by some of the workouts I will push a little bit harder to get the "feel uncomfortable" sensation and when it shows up in the race it won't spook me.

Conversely, I've taken EZ and rest days more seriously. Who cares if your 9:20 EZ miles show up on Strava or whatever platform shows up for social media.

I am realizing those EZ miles have so much recovery value and they prep my legs for hard workouts later on.

I do this as well--for a 4-mile tempo today I ran slower than the pack, back half, they went out way fast and I tried to reel them in, picking them off one by one.

It's a good idea to have a ton of base before doing that. It was a good practice in terms of knowing how to finish people off in a real race.

I know you *shouldn't* race your workouts, and they will get harder as racing season goes on, but the first time was a good mental barrier I needed to break to tell myself I still had some ability left even though I'm older.

Johnfrog11 wrote:

I'Ve read a lot here that racing your workouts is bad. But what's the difference between racing your workouts and just good hard work ?

Some rest breaks or easy jogging every few hundred meters, mostly.

Who in their right mind runs a positive split of that magnitude and instead of changing it mid workout continues training like that for years? Maybe training plans are just a bunch of BS, I've never heard of someone running that fast with such poor workputs

A training program, including the workouts, has a lot of thought behind. Long term goals, short term goals. Racing a workout there is no plan at all. Just people feeling good with no plan at all. Never mind that racing a workout might hurt your next workout. People who race workout don't have a lot of discipline and aren't thinking long-term or even short-term. They're just thinking about today.

The reason you don't race workouts is because all out efforts are quite tiring.

If you keep it controlled, even paced, and finish your workout knowing that you could do another rep or two at the same intensity if you had to - then you'll likely be able to recover in time to get in another solid workout a few days later.

If you're running all out every workout, you likely won't recover in time for your next workout (not to mention the next day's easy run) and you'll start a cycle of cumulated fatigue, wherein you'll continually spiral downward.

It's also a really nice feeling to look forward to races, as having held yourself back in training for weeks, you finally get to let yourself off the chain and go for it.

Depends if the workouts line up with the races. If your doing mile repeats at 5:00/mi with say 3min rest but on race day your doing 5:20/mi on the same type of surface I would say your racing the workout. If you are running the same workout in the 5:15-5:20 range but say on the last rep you split 2:40/2:30 really pushing the last 800 to work on finishing could be appropriate to "race" but not racing the whole workout and peaking early or burning out. Same can be said about pushing the first 400 of the first mile rep then settling into 5k pace to practice getting out and settling into pace like in the bigger XC races.