The first practice race scheduled in the BC Endurance marathon training is the Windward 25K (15.5 miles). It comes a mere seven weeks into the training when our longest workout will have been only 2.5 hours long. So, many of our athletes wonder how they can finish 15 miles when they haven’t run nearly that far in training.
The slowest athletes in our training will need about 4.5 hours to do 15.5 miles (17.5 minutes per mile). Yet they don’t need to have done a four-hour workout in training. The 2.5-hour workout will suffice. That’s because our working muscles don’t know about running a certain distance; they only know what they’ve learned about using fat and glycogen to create energy for long distance running.
Some of our athletes have run 26.2-mile marathons successfully on little more than a 6-mile run several times a week. And they’ve rarely run more than a few workouts beyond 10 miles. Here’s the point: if you can walk or jog at a slow pace for two hours, then you can walk or jog at the same slow pace for four hours, which is long enough to finish the 25K. Yes, the overall effort will be considerably harder than the effort at half the distance. But you’ll finish the race without major injury or duress.
Of course, the hidden qualifier in the previous paragraph is “the same slow pace.” Most athletes want to break the world record every time they race, meaning they wouldn’t be satisfied with racing at their training pace. They want bragging rights at work the next day. Yet, the question we began with is how you can finish 25K if you haven’t run that far in training. And the answer is by staying within your capacity, which is delimited by what you’ve been able to do in training.
“We place importance on doing a ‘great’ race. That’s the race you want – say, one where you finished with fight in your legs, able to pick it up in the final mile.”
Granted, some athletes don’t want to approach the 25K as just another long, slow workout. Those athletes usually have some space between their training and racing capacity. They might have done, say, 15 miles during their 2.5-hour training run (10 minutes per mile). Yet, those more-talented athletes have a similar question to ponder: how much faster can they do the race while remaining within their capacity?
No question: a race is different from a workout. One can brag about workout performances, and many do. But the more worthy test of your ability is how you perform in a race. Granted, some athletes don’t care about their finish time. But whether you care or not, you will have a time. And in our culture finish times are often the only thing other people care about. Our advice, therefore, when co-workers ask about your time is fib. They won’t know the difference even if you tell a whopper, such as you finished at 10 minutes a mile when you are capable of 17s at best.
Besides, they don’t know what’s important about the racing game. From a competitive point of view, the question is how did you perform against the athletes who were around you in the final quarter of the race? Similarly, we place importance on doing a “great” race. That’s the race you want, including, say, one where you finished with fight in your legs, able to pick it up in the final mile. Thus, a great race is one where, when you finish, you throw your arms up and yell a resounding “YES!”