Workout Effort vs. Race Effort
Many runners like to chase splits, obsess over paces and prove their fitness during workouts.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of testing your fitness on a regular training day. But this approach isn’t a smart way to train, and that's because when the workouts are too hard, recovery takes longer.
When recovery takes longer, our overall training load will suffer because we will either:
carry extra fatigue into the next workout, increasing the chance of injury and lowering the quality of the workout
OR
run fewer workouts to allow more easy days between each one for recovery.
The Purpose of Training
Most runners regularly doing intervals, tempo runs, hill repeats are training for something. We have a goal. Whether it’s to run a PR, or complete a new distance, or generally get fitter, faster and stronger, the workouts are meant to help us achieve something.
Workouts should not only make us fitter, they should help us develop the mental skills needed to achieve our goal. Workouts are an opportunity to work on pacing and discipline. They are a chance to practice gauging how hard we are working at a given moment, and adjusting our pace based on effort. We should be focused, dialed in to our effort at all times and aiming to finish strong (but not depleted) in every single workout.
Runners who max out every workout aren’t practicing discipline, and aren’t learning how to listen to their body.
The Purpose of Racing
Races are for testing our fitness. Races are an opportunity to find out how tough we really are. They are the moment to see our training pay off.
For races, we aim to rest up, taper and be totally fresh on the start line. We want to get the most out of ourselves. We want to finish STRONG but also with nothing left to give. We’re trying to thread the needle between a) starting too fast and fading to the finish or b) feeling like we could have gone faster.
This is really hard to do! I would say it’s actually impossible without lots of practice. We need to be really good at reading our gas gauge. We need to be confident that we can trust how our body feels in order to get the most out of ourselves. Those skills are developed in training.
© Sifuentes Coaching 2024
Tapering
In training we generally carrying a low level of fatigue on workouts days. We don’t attempt to taper for every workout, but rather aim for consistent, solid workouts while also running a decent amount of mileage on non-workout days.
The easy miles (or minutes) of running is an important part of training. (Read why here: Junk Miles) It isn’t smart to compromise this easy running because we’re maxing out every workout.
For races however, we do compromise mileage and workouts. We intentionally scale back our training load and intensity so that we feel totally rested, fresh, even a little antsy on race day.
We want to start with a full gas tank, and completely empty it just as we reach the finish line.
Practical Workout Suggestion
If you’re a workout warrior, regularly trying to “crush your workout” or “get one more rep” then try this workout:
Open-Ended Intervals:
Decide on the interval distance, goal pace, and recovery. For example: 400m (or quarter-mile) repeats, at 95sec, with 2min rests.
The total number of intervals is TBD.
Bring your curiosity to the workout! Run intervals (in the set parameters) to the point where you think you could do 1-2 more. Then, end the workout. Purposefully stop while knowing you could do at least 1 more good interval on pace.
Bottle up the feeling of wrapping up a workout with a little left in the tank. That’s an appropriate way to end a workout.
Nicole Sifuentes is a full-time Running Coach for adults of all ages and abilities. She is a former professional runner and 2-time Olympian, and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Read more about her services, and schedule your free coaching consultation.
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