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5 weeks ago or so, cut back on mileage and decided to race more, with every expectation that my race performances would improve and that I'd get fitter and fitter. Done 9 races since then and every one sees me take a step backwards :mad:. Yesterday's race was officially the worst one this year :mad:. It's getting very frustrating - have any forumites experienced this? Do I need to stop racing?
if you have to ask the question the answer is undoubtedly yes!
Interesting question.
My wife was talking to a top female runner who says she does little training, othe than a bit of cycling, but races 3 x a week.
I've just upped my racing to one / week roughly, but I've only done 11 races this year, but they totalled nearly 230 miles of racing.
have you heard premiership footballers complaining about lack of fitness in May? Basically their week is 90 minute game Saturday, rest Sunday, light training/massages Monday, light training tuesday/prep for wednesday game, Wednesday 90 minutes, Thursday rest/light training massages, Friday light training prep for game, Saturday game.
By May they are actually pretty unfit. They haven't done any serious fitness training for months. But that is different to running races, when races will undoubtably be great training.
To race well you have to be fresh, which means tapering down your training. If you always race then you will be taking out of the bank without ever putting anything back in. I’ll be doing three 10-20 min BOFRA races this week, which means I’ll be having to drop a lot of my longer runs. If I did this every week I’d soon lose fitness.
Back in the day.... I used to aim at doing about 7 races in 3 a month period. It means that you can spend some weeks banging in extra mileage and speed sessions without worrying about being flat in races. Some races I did train through, some I tapered for. I never raced for the sake of racing - social racing which what I do now really.
It's down to what your aim is. Do you want to 'run' or do you want to 'compete' ?
Neither is right nor wrong, but training to compete is a science. (or black art...)
I'd like to be able to compete socially ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by dominion
Seriously, I feel as though I've pateaued for a l-o-n-g time. I'd like to be making the same improvements that I see from other members in my club and from runners in some other local clubs. I'm never going to be up there with the Taggarts, Baileys, Hopes etc but a podium finish in a local race is nice.
It seems as though trying to get better at racing by loading up on races hasn't worked for me at all - I ran 19 races in the whole of last year and have done 18 this year so far, most of which have been done recently. I reckon I was going better last year.
Why not talk to some of these improvers and find out how they did it? Doing lots of races may work for some people to an extent but if you seriously want to improve you need to make sure that you don't run too many races for two long.Quote:
Originally Posted by crowhill
Some people are complete animals and could probably race 2 or 3 times a week for an extended period of time, for other even once a week or fortnight might be too much - it depends on your body.
Good luck - the answer will be out there. There is no one size fits all formula but by talking to as many people as possible and, most importantly, critically analysing your own racing and training and making the necessary changes you will eventually find the mix that works best for you.