Races are happening again. The 50K race I was originally scheduled to run in March 2020 will now happen in October 2021. I’m re-registered, though I’m still far from getting my mileage back up post-surgery to be training for it.

As races resume, I wanted to start some discussions about training. Let’s think of this newsletter as planning for planning to train.

I know some of you have already raced this year or late last year, but most of us are returning to racing over a year older than we were when we last raced. If you had goals that were put on hiatus in early 2020, they are not unnecessarily unreachable now, even if it takes longer to get back into racing shape if you have been going without group runs or training groups. I often go back to Nicholas Thompson’s 2020 piece for Wired Magazine, “To Run My Best Marathon at Age 44, I had to Outrun My Past, in which he worked through the sort of mental and physical work he had to do to run his best marathon at 44. In April, Thompson set an age group record for 50K, in the same race where Des Linden set the world record.

What are some things to start doing now in preparation for your fall race?

First, don’t overcommit. Determine which race is your goal race and gear your training toward that. We can’t always be at our peak performance level, so we need to work toward something. It will be tempting to sign up for a lot of races since they’re suddenly available. Fall races, postponed races, and new races are piling up on fall race calendars.

Analyze your past performances. Are you looking for a breakthrough, a PR, a Boston Qualifier? Go back to your previous efforts at your race distance, but don’t just analyze the race but the training block you used to prepare for it. Did you go in tired? Fresh? Injured? Overtrained? Undertrained? Here is where it can be useful to work with a coach to get a fresh perspective and approach. If you do the same thing you did in the past, you might get the same result.

Plan how much time you will have to train for the race, keeping in mind that the length of your training program (12 weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks, etc.) depends on your current fitness and the race distance. During this time, you will want to work on speed, strength, and endurance building, knowing especially that the long run (those efforts over 90 minutes) are necessary for building the mitochondrial density and physiological adaptations necessary for long races. As you build your training program, alone or with a coach, here is where analysis of past performances can be useful. Where were you relative to your goal and what can be done differently this time?

In future newsletters, I will discuss some more specifics about training, but I encourage you to think about what your goal race is, possible coaches and training groups, and past performances. Now is the time to start to work on other important patterns. Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness’s Peak Performance works through the important concept that stress + rest = growth.

The training is the added stress, but we also have other stressors in our life through work, family, and other responsibilities. Many runners begin training programs full of energy, only to become mentally fatigued and burnt out, even as they are still improving physically. For many of us, this fall will be a return to a more typical work schedule (in-person, with commutes) at the same time we return to racing. Keeping focused on the overall structure of your lives, keeping that time for rest so you can grow will be essential. I’m not the first to mention this in a running newsletter, but Rich Roll’s recent podcast episode with Matthew Walker, “Sleep is Non-Negotiable,” is a must-listen. Author of Why We Sleep, Walker offers a master class on the physical and mental importance of sleep. As life picks back up, think about sleep as part of your training. Not sleeping well can affect your ability to perform as much as not running well, and for the growth it will take to reach your goals, you need both.

We also need to think through where our goals fit in our lives. The pandemic has challenged us to confront our lives, to simplify, to prioritize, and to think through what means most to us. Running and racing can be sources of confidence, social interaction, and health, but they can also be addictions and counter to our best interests. We have a fine amount of time and willpower to succeed, and deciding how we will build training–something that is physically and mentally exhausting–into our lives as they take more of a pre-pandemic pattern will affect where we are at the end of the race almost as much as our training plans will.

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Newsletter 10: “First Steps Toward Racing Again”