Sunday, June 08, 2014

Are you a prolifigate racer?

Race season here is in full swing, with three or events a week going on. Last week it was the Annihilator 10K, then on Tuesday Masochism on Moose Mountain, Thursday was the all comers track meet, Tour de Fairbanks cycling this weekend, a local Color Run, and Run Lulu Run 5 and 10K. Next week is busy too. So it got me thinking what kind of racer are you?

Prolific - a marathon a week or several shorter races in the same time? That approach is increasingly common. I am amazed at the number of races and race miles that some people rack up. 26.2 on Sunday, 13.1 on Saturday, 10K Sunday, 50K the next Sunday, 50 miler as a tune up for the next week's 100 miler, followed by a 26.2 the next week off in California... 20 or 30 years ago you hardly ever saw anyone doing that. Now it's almost the norm, and you're kind of not cool if you don't do all that.

The Focused Moderate - up to about two races a month on average, with emphasis on performance or being recovered enough to feel good. Well, I probably fall under the Focused Moderate category. If I do the series races I'll do a few races in the series or between events as preps or fillers, but not at an all out effort. I figure you only have so many peak efforts in a year, maybe six or seven, so it's best to pick and choose a little. This year I'm doing fewer tune up races to give my legs a chance to recover. Still feeling the effects from the half marathon two weeks ago, so I'll probably pass on a race effort at the summer track series or road 5K prior to the Midnight Sun Run in two weeks. I just feel like being a little bit under-raced this year. So I'll have four races in a May and June.

Seasonal - run a certain amount of races, but only in a discrete time frame. Typical of high school or college teams. They're still out there, but it's hard to follow that pattern unless you are on a team.

The Shy Runner - Takes a major event (often a marathon it seems) to step out of all that mileage to run, maybe only do one race every six months, or in some cases once every few years. To each their own, but I'd get bored doing that. Easy to lose focus so all that you're doing is logging miles and workouts.






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