race to train to race

Most competitive runners have probably heard this warning before: "Train to race, don't race to train." To put it another way: "Don't be a workout hero." Over a given period of time, six weeks or six months or whatever, even world class runners can only deliver a relatively small number of breakout performances. Those efforts should be saved for races rather than wasted during (yet another) five mile tempo run or interval session. This is often harder than it sounds. I was never the top runner on my college cross country team but, being young and stupid, I usually tried to keep up with the top runner(s) during training. Unfortunately, that makes no sense. If you can't race with someone you shouldn't try to match that person during training. It means that you: 1) worked too hard for the potential benefit, and 2) probably won't recover well enough to race effectively.

So, yes, of course racing a workout is a bad idea. But I still believe that frequent racing is a legitimate form of training. The nice thing about the XC / IT / OT seasonal rhythm was that once per week we had an opportunity to fine tune our craft. Repetition generates success. Tempo, hills, volume, intervals, striders, long runs -- yeah yeah all that stuff matters. But maximizing potential at something like the mile or the 5K means that you do the mile or the 5K, against competition, over and over and over. And then you'll know how to race it. It's time to move past the "train to race" phase. It's time to race to train to race.