What are you doing!? Running or Racing? 

05 Dec What are you doing!? Running or Racing? 

There’s this age old rumour that running has to feel hard. 
Even once you finally get over that “hump” of struggling through the first 5 minutes. 

And those scoffing in disbelief – honestly, the day will come when sometimes things almost feel “easy”.
But even when things feel easy… 
We tell ourselves to work a bit harder. It’s crazy how the human mind works!
It shouldn’t ever be easy..? Should it? 
And as my inbox is filling up with all kinds of marathon related questions, I thought I’d answer the age old question of using races as training events. 
Is it a good idea or not? (This goes for marathons or any distance at all). 
From a motivational perspective, and this is aimed at those who know they will struggle to get up on a Sunday for those key long runs (you know who you are!) 😉
Then yes, races will be ideal to help encourage you out the door. 
The main negative is that you CANNOT treat each one as an event. 
The smart head needs to be popped on for reasons I’ll explain now. 
You see, for all of us, we need time to recover from hard training sessions. 
Regardless of ability, pace or training experience. 

(Our ability to recover will improve the fitter/more conditioned we are though).
But the fact remains, post run, we need to recover and heal. 
If we are trying to race on back to back weekends in the lead up to a marathon (where the training stress on your body will be high anyway). 
Then it’s a recipe for disaster. 
BUT, if we can treat these events as just training runs. Then we can (and I have coached hundreds to do so) use it to our advantage. 
There is no one size fits all strategy. 

You need to know yourself what you are motivated by. 
I know for a fact, I literally cannot line up at an event and hold anything back. 

Therefore for me, I’ll avoid doing too many! 
But I also coach other runners who are incredibly well disciplined and can stick to our agreed plan for pacing during an event. 
It’s all about thinking about the bigger picture and shaping everything around this. 
Which is exactly why we’ve put together a MARATHON WEEKEND. 

One whole weekend dedicated to learning about how to structure your plan towards your marathon. 
Cut through all the rubbish out there about fuelling your marathon and get right to the facts. 
And also make sure that everything you do will set YOU up for success on the day. 
And that’s YOU, as a real person. 
We won’t assume anything and just hand out a  Blue Peter Style plan we made earlier. 
We want you to leave with exact plans designed around you created together.

Plus having a lot of fun with likeminded individuals!  

I think that’s pretty cool! 
Check out the Weekend Link for details about the Marathon Weekend (and our other 2017 dates):

>>RC Weekend HERE <<

I’m also currently working my way through a new ebook all about marathon training too, I’m hoping to get it finished off this month ready for your Spring Marathons! 
I’ll let you know when it’s ready 😉 
RunStrong

Coach Ant

P.s. I know when it comes to promoting the weekends I’m supposed to create scarcity about how many places are left, but we honestly only have 8 spaces left – we only rent small lodges and want to keep numbers on this weekend especially low to get a bit more hands on with the attendees on such a complicated subject!