Race to get fit v Fit to race.

[Fairyfeet]

OK, so the second half of this year has been scuppered by personal apathy and injury. I managed to train for the Wensleydale Wedge then buggered my knee up at Bolton Castle on the day due to a historically tight IT Band. 7 miles is such a long way to hop!
So, 2012 is on it's way and I am already faced with cancelling races that I had planned to do and I am soooooooooooooooooooooo fed up.
The question is how fit do you have to be to race? I could be waiting forever to be what I call 'fit enough' and it's destroying my self confidence. The less I run the less I want to run or the less I feel I can run...

How do you break this destructive cycle?

[noel]

OK, so the second half of this year has been scuppered by personal apathy and injury. I managed to train for the Wensleydale Wedge then buggered my knee up at Bolton Castle on the day due to a historically tight IT Band. 7 miles is such a long way to hop!
So, 2012 is on it's way and I am already faced with cancelling races that I had planned to do and I am soooooooooooooooooooooo fed up.
The question is how fit do you have to be to race? I could be waiting forever to be what I call 'fit enough' and it's destroying my self confidence. The less I run the less I want to run or the less I feel I can run...

How do you break this destructive cycle?

I have the winter off training hard and racing each year. So from February to early May I am underfit relative to my normal standard. I still race during the Feb to May period, but understand that these races are part of my training to be fully race-fit again.

I think you might be placing too much importance on the races and putting pressure on yourself. If you enter loads of races, you can consider them part of your training. I'm not saying you should jog round them, but equally you'll know you won't be beating your course record.

You can still have races that you decide to take really seriously, but you can pick these throughout the season depending on how well you're going at the time. I hope this helps. I realise everyone is different, so this might not work at all for you.

[that_fjell_guy]

Races make you race fit!! Defo!...training makes you fit to race to differing degrees depending on the level you train at!...for the rest I refer you to the above!

[Stagger]

A season doing cross training and Bofra races has worked for me.

They are great events with really nice folks in great locations.

Just give it a try.

[Fairyfeet]

Well I was aiming to go long this next year but to be honest I don't think my legs will let me, so a season on Bofra races was in the back of my mind.

[dominion]

The key is to have a regime, and a plan with short, medium and long term goals. Each goal has to be a step up from the last goal. The first goal for you sounds like it needs to be to get out running regularly. They don't have to be long runs, but they do have to be regular else putting off a run for day ends up meaning putting it off for a week. You also need to work on injury prevention, so stretching needs to be part of the goal. It's no good running for a fews days, getting injured, having a week off etc.. You have to stretch as part of the regular routine - it's better to run less and stretch more than to put the stretching off and then end up injured.

As to whether you have to be fit to race, well that depends on your reason for racing. If you're running just to get round, then no, all you have to do is enough to get round. If you want to be competitive, then yes you need to be fit to race. Neither is right nor wrong, it's a personal thing that you have to decide on. I've barely raced in two years, and I don't miss it, but I do miss the social side. Trouble is if I ever do get fit I'll want to race, and if I race I'll want to race well. That's just the way my brain is wired - other people think differently.

[Stagger]

The key is to have a regime, and a plan with short, medium and long term goals. Each goal has to be a step up from the last goal. The first goal for you sounds like it needs to be to get out running regularly. They don't have to be long runs, but they do have to be regular else putting off a run for day ends up meaning putting it off for a week. You also need to work on injury prevention, so stretching needs to be part of the goal. It's no good running for a fews days, getting injured, having a week off etc.. You have to stretch as part of the regular routine - it's better to run less and stretch more than to put the stretching off and then end up injured.

As to whether you have to be fit to race, well that depends on your reason for racing. If you're running just to get round, then no, all you have to do is enough to get round. If you want to be competitive, then yes you need to be fit to race. Neither is right nor wrong, it's a personal thing that you have to decide on. I've barely raced in two years, and I don't miss it, but I do miss the social side. Trouble is if I ever do get fit I'll want to race, and if I race I'll want to race well. That's just the way my brain is wired - other people think differently.

Good advice Dom, and fron a lad who's been there. Cheers

[Fairyfeet]

Cheers all, I see common sense prevailing!

[Stolly]

I'm fairly ambivalent to races and can, to a certain extent, take them or leave them. What I definitely don't do is train for races but I do enjoy races when I do them...... and I find them really good training

[mr brightside]

OK, so the second half of this year has been scuppered by personal apathy and injury. I managed to train for the Wensleydale Wedge then buggered my knee up at Bolton Castle on the day due to a historically tight IT Band. 7 miles is such a long way to hop!
So, 2012 is on it's way and I am already faced with cancelling races that I had planned to do and I am soooooooooooooooooooooo fed up.
The question is how fit do you have to be to race? I could be waiting forever to be what I call 'fit enough' and it's destroying my self confidence. The less I run the less I want to run or the less I feel I can run...

How do you break this destructive cycle?

This year is about my third year of running with ITBS, i'll skip the details the forum has heard it all too many times. I don't have a training regime at all, my ITBS won't allow me the milage either on foot or on a bike, i just race at once weekends and keep the distance down to less than 5m. It works like this but i'm constantly on a knife edge with my susceptibility to injury and at the moment i'm nursing a strained quadriceps tendon which went on me on a course i've run many times before. Like Dom says stretching should be part of your lifestyle, i do ITB and hamstring twice a day every day; you'd do well to get your ITBS shifted too, in some people it is easy to get rid of.