Should you be running your race-day distance during training?
The short answer is obviously no, you shouldn't. Find out which races are no-no's
My daughter is currently doing the ½ mile at the Healthy Kids Running Series.
She’s 7.
We got her out for a few jogs during the summer and early fall just to get her legs used to running again. Sure she runs around, but she doesn’t really run.
We never had any expectations that she’d run the full half mile during any of these runs. We want her to have fun with it and so we never pressured her to run far or fast. She walked when she wanted to and she stopped when she was tired.
Keeping “training” fun for her has always been our number one priority.
But then there are the adults…
We don’t always take the same approach to training, do we? We run faster than we’re supposed to, we run when we’re tired and oftentimes, we tend to resent training because we’ve been training so much without any down time.
I’m here to remind you that training is supposed to be fun and no, we aren’t supposed to run all out or “the full race distance” in training, “just because”.
For most races - 5k through 10 miles (or maybe a half marathon, depending on your training volume), if you were to apply the principle above to your race, you might struggle significantly when it comes time to running a fast race. If you aren’t running more than 6 miles in a single run, running a 10k will be quite a challenge for you.
So yeah, you do need to run race distances in training - maybe not every week if you are half marathon training, but if your weekly volume permits, yes, you should be hitting double digits on long run days (and maybe even workout days if you read my post two week’s ago).
But for anything over that 10 mile or 13 mile race distance, no, I don’t think you need to run race distance (a marathon) in training just to make sure you can run a marathon on race day.
It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t add up. The risk of injury gets significantly higher the more you stress your body without an adequate amount of recovery.
You could run 23+ miles in one go during a training run and risk injury, be on your feet all day, need to take off 1-2 days after the run to help you recover…
Or, you can do a 5-7 mile run the day before your long run with strides after it, then a 15 mile long run with some pickups in the middle, and the day after the long run, still have the legs to run 5-7 miles as a recovery run.
In the second scenario, you’ve run 25-29 miles with enough rest time to allow your body to recover. You’ve run more mileage - some miles faster than regular miles - and definitely faster than at the end of a 23 mile slog-fest. But you’re not at any higher risk to injure yourself.
If there’s any one takeaway from this post it’s this: You do not need to do all of your weekly mileage in one or two runs. Instead of having 2 massive days, try spreading it out throughout the week. You’ll allow for a lot more recovery without having to always need multiple days to rest.
And if you “need to feel ready” for a longer race, you can always do a Friday night 10-12 miler and a Saturday morning 10-12 miler. You’ll find the recovery isn’t really all that much - you’ll still be quite tired and depleted - but your pace can be somewhat useful because it’s “only” 10 miles.
Summary
Depending on who you are and what your goals are, you do not need to run the same distance as your race. It leaves you vulnerable to injury.
Leave a comment or reply to my email - what’s the farthest you run during arathon training?!
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Friday’s Action Plan
Trust your training that you do not need to run race distances during training.
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