Rolling your fitness forward to your ‘B’ race
Living to fight another day.
What do you do when you show up for the race you have trained well and specifically for and Mother Nature throws a spanner in the works? It’s a hot day, or a windy day or there is some other kind of emergency that prevents you from getting the best shot at the time you are gunning for.
What do you do?
In the old days I would just keep running a marathon every two weeks until I got my time. Twice in my life I raced 3 marathons in 6 weeks in order to take existing fitness and qualify in that 3rd race. I’m not young anymore!
I think a month to 6 weeks is the right cycle for me now. I have the base and that will allow me to get a recovery, a couple good weeks of training and a couple weeks of taper for Memorial Day.
The hard thing about trying to race your best is that it takes a lot out of you. You create a schedule where you are trying to time it just right to have peak fitness on race day. You’re compressing that spring so it is perfectly ready to go for that specific race on that day.
When you get a bad weather day or something else happens you have to reset that timing and see when you can peak again. With the marathon distance, of you are racing, it can take a lot out of you. You can’t just turn around and run the next day. That’s what’s great about the distance but also makes it a bit of a dice roll on race day.
I’ve walked off courses at the half marathon mark when I didn’t think I was having my best day, simply to save my legs for another try in a couple weeks. That messes with people’s heads. Why wouldn’t you just finish? Well, I knew I could finish, but that wasn’t my goal.
Like I was saying before the timing and cycle is off now when you’re trying to get your time for Boston. It used to be you would have any number of fast courses to choose from in October. This was a great cycle. You wouldn’t have to start training until July and you would peak as the weather was cooling in New England. If you missed it you could even roll forward to a March race to qualify for April!
With the new qualification windows you have to get your time before August 31st. It almost forces you to go for it at Boston. If you wait until October you’re out another year. Now you’re forced to train over the summer and find a race somewhere in the summer. It’s a cycle that feels foreign to me.