Hi everyone. Now I know what I should do but being one of a crazy breed I very rarely follow the rule books. So let's have your views on doing 6 races in 6 weeks with one weeks rest before another 3 weeks of races!
The 6 in a row are all 1/2 marathon distance except one 10 mile race. They are a mixture of multi terrain and road so the surfaces are varied. The final one will be Cheddar where I'm hoping to get a pb! After the weeks rest I then have a further 3 races of 10k and one 10 mile. The last one I want to attempt to get a new 10k pb. Thoughts please.
0 ·
Comments
I think the key is to listen to your body and continually assess to see if you can continue with you goal
Will
Most people will probably advise against it - personally I'm a fan of frequent racing and regularly run successive weekends. My advice would be:
1. Whilst I think frequent racing is OK, I think 6 half-marathons (one 10 miler) is too much. Generally recommended is one day of recovery for each mile raced, so if I was going to do six weeks of races I would say max would be 2-3 halfs and the other 10k or shorter.
2. Drop all speed training if you decide to do it otherwise you risk overtraining.
From your posts you seem in pretty good shape so give it it a go but be prepared to bail if your body says no.
Martin, I too am a fan of frequent racing but normally wouldn't do 6 races of 1/2M distance. I just thought with 3 of them being off road it would be like doing my long Sunday runs, which are normally 15/16 miles. I might have to assess as I go along.
It's a pain as they are all races I want to do, except one, which I've already entered because it's a club race.
There are (faint!) similarities between my situation and yours - I've raced the last 3 Sundays, and am contemplating 2 more races in the next 4 weeks (possibly 3 in 6).
If these sort of distances are what you'd do in the course of training normally, the mileage in itself is not an issue, I wouldn't have thought. More relevant is maybe the intensity question: how hard are you going to race them?
I put a lot into the latter stages of both the 10Ks I did a fortnight ago and last Sunday. As a result, it took most of the rest of last week before I felt I'd recovered anywhere near enough for yesterday's 5K. But maybe that's just my lack of fitness.
Nonetheless, for longer distances, I'd have thought that "eyeballs out" efforts week after week would be a huge ask - possibly risky in terms of health or injury.
Maybe alternate between "hard" and "flat out" from week to week? Or are there consecutive races on your schedule where you really want to make an impact?
For the halfs i did times of: 1.41, 1.40, 1.41 and 1.47 hours. (My PB for a 1/2M at that time was about 1.35 hours.)
So take it easy, get lots of rest between races and see how your body feels.
I've not done 6 in 6 weeks but I've done 4 in 4 before (includes a midweek event). I treated the midweek race as a recovery after the previous Sundays race , and treated one of the other two Sundays as a 'long run' albeit with a group of others.
I have to admit to usually being so lacking in self discipline that it was tempting to 'race' all 4, but I'd rather have taken the 2 very good performances (+ 2 more medals) than 4 so-so runs.
Whats the timetable ?
5/10 Blandford Tower 1/2 (multi terrain)
13/10 Mendip Muddle 20k (multi terrain)
19/10 Weymouth 10 (road/hilly)
27/10 either Exmoor Stagger 16 miles off road or Stickler 3 peaks 10 miles off road.
3/11 Salisbury Fire Station 1/2 (road)
9/11 Cheddar 1/2 (flat road pb attempt)
Rest from racing
24/11 Brent Knoll 5.5 (off road)
1/12 Fully Monty 10 tough miles (off road)
8/12 Christchurch Christmas Cracker 10k (flat road-pb attempt)
But as mentioned I may now not get to do them all.
Are you disciplined enough not to run/cancel race plans if you're feeling fatigued or do you think to hell with caution and do your damnest to run anyway?
Best of luck with your race plans; also, will you be starting marathon training straight after Christmas or having a well earned rest??
I would have thought you could re-arrange your schedule so that these runs replace your normal speed sessions. It would certainly work for 10K's - I guess if you take the starts and the finishes slower than race pace you should survive but be prepared to bail out/slow down if necessary.
As a side thought you might enjoy the Mortimer Forest 10M at Ludlow - its very .... dare I say it ... hilly.
Groan ... Sorry
Obviously sometimes we experience bad runs in races and some races are more of a struggle than others. I might be lucky to actually feel happy with my times in a few of them.
When you know what you are capable of, I think one then does have certain expectations. It's sometimes hard when things go wrong, but I can and do put bad experiences behind me and get on with the next one.
If I manage to fit them all in, there's one that I really might not be able to do now, then I will take Christmas week off completely from running. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the London Marathon yet or whether to concentrate on something else. I have a month or just over before I have to send my Marathon entry. Decisions! Decisions!
I do love off road hilly runs! Can't say the same for hilly road runs though.
Caz I'm not up on some of the talk used on this forum, what is Boing?
and when are we going to get the edit reply function bac k?