Too much racing? (Read 1430 times)

So, how much is too much? I just started running (literally, could barely make it two minutes without needing a walk break) in late-July of 2008 after a 4 year hiatus from college athletics. I was sitting down with a list of races in the area for the upcoming months and couldn't help but wonder how many is too many? Especially for someone new to the running world. Is one race a month insane or doable? Obviously, I know this varies by person, but I am just curious what other newbies have done and felt comfortable with.

The more the effort you put in to, the more recovery you should take. Effort is a combination of duration and speed. If you're running 4 miles for your "easy" day at about 9:30 pace, sometimes even sub-9, your long run of 1:30 at about 9:30 pace, sometimes faster even, and your 5k "race" at 9:20, I don't think you'd have to worry too much about limiting how many "races" you should participate. Enter as many as you want and enjoy them.

(I like your long ones too)

(Nobby) This one needed to be longer cause the short makes no sense and answers nothing.

Hey! I thouht I answered well! I said; don't worry, run as many "races" as you want (to the OP). So people want my LONG post (though I'm sure most of you read only 1/3 of what I write...). If you check OP's workout log and PR; it seems to me that she pretty much runs at the same effort. Sometimes she does her "easy" runs faster than her "race". Well, nothing wrong with that. Many people today, as we've gotten into this discussion elsewhere, participate "races" to socialize, have fun, feel good. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. To them, "races" are not the opportunity to see how hard you can run. To me, training means; you go far, you go fast, you go medium distance/duration at fairly hard effort, and then you throw recoveries in between... And THEN you put them all together and race--race, to me, means where you would push to run further and/or faster than you would do in "training". Training is a dress rehearsal. "Race" is the real thing. To many today, it is not. If what she means by "race" being things like a half marathon or a marathon, sure, she shoudn't try to do it every weekend or every other weekend. She would take a lot of pouding--like I said, effort is combination of duration/distance and speed. Even the effort/pace is not too hard, if you run far, you get some effect. So you should take it easy a bit to recover. But if you're "racing" a 5k at pretty much the same pace/effort as all the other runs, hey, why not? As long as you can afford to pay for the entry fee, it's a great place to meet people and have fun. Why limit it? This weekend, there will be Osaka Ladies marathon in Japan. Yoko Shibui, who finished 4th in Tokyo women's marathon in November, is running again. I'm very curious to see how she'd do. In 2003/2004, the defending Olympic marathon champion, Naoko Takahashi, hit the wall in Tokyo marathon in November and finished second and missed the Olympic team. After Tokyo, I wrote to her coach, Yoshio Koide, that she should try to run Osaka in January. Training is stress and recovery followed by improved fitness level. You do your last long run (maybe except for you, Srlopez! ) and your body goes, wow, I'd better get strong to handle this kind of stress. Then (hopefully) on the marathon day, you can handle such a stress much easier. Quite often, someone who screws up in the marathon comes back and run another one after 5~8 weeks, they actually, surprisingly, might do well. So...I just wrote to Shibui's coach, Watanabe, that she might actually do very well (for as much as confidence building purpose as well...). The trick, of course, is recovery after the first one. More often than not, from disappointment and frustration, they would go back and go straiht into hard training. Then you might get into a stress situation and that wouldn't be good. But if they recover well, without losing their fitness level, they might do well. If you race like that, yes, then recovery is quite important and you shouldn't race all over the place. Well, Srlopez, you can probably chip in on here; you race all over the place. I would put my foot in the mouth and say that, if you peak, you'd do considerably better. But, from my understanding, you get a kick out of racing a lot and that's what you do. Well, why not? You're probably so superbly fit that you can run a 3-hour marathon every weekend. I used to be fit enough to run 20-miler at sub-7 pace every weekend. If you're that fit and if you want to run marathons often, why not? There, is this long enough?

Nobby, thanks for the elaborated version!! MTA: To answer the question: I don't know. But my thoughts are that no one can answer that question but you, and you won't know till you try. My theory is to run/race till I break. Then i'll rebuild and make the necessary adjustments... Have fun pushing the limits!

Hey! I thouht I answered well! I said; don't worry, run as many "races" as you want (to the OP). So people want my LONG post (though I'm sure most of you read only 1/3 of what I write...).

Just to set the record straight here ==== Nobby your short answer was good.......BUT, I alway read you long answers... There are so many of us that dont really know, but give our opinions....you have been in the running world at a different level then most of us (surely me) and so I find your long post to be interesting and they normally come froma different diminsion......KEEP THEM COMING.....Ill read them.........

Shibui wins the Osaka Ladies Marathon. Nobby, you predicted very well. MTA: Dam that's fast.

A rule of thumb is a dumb thing as everyone is different and there are many variables. So, having said that, if you want a guideline and like numbers then here is a dumb rule of thumb... give yourself x days to recover between races where x = the distance of the last race in km. So a 5k every week? Sure. A 10k every 2 weeks? sure. 3-4 weeks between half-marathons? Sure. But just know you may not get your best performance if you bunch them up too much as you'll be spending a lot of time recovering and not really training for a peak performance.