Racing just right

The Goldilocks theory of a successful race

There are two types of races: those that hurt and those you don’t enter.

Folks who’ve entered enough races have probably had a few successes and likely many failures. But they all hurt. This doesn’t sound very enticing, but it can be fun, especially when I have a successful race.

A successful race isn’t a race I win. I don’t “win” any races. Only a handful of people get that honor so effectively, so effectively, no one wins races.

To understand a successful race, it helps to know what a failed race is to me. While there can be hundreds, even thousands, of other competitors toeing the line, most people race against themselves. Not literally of course, but, for any race, we have some idea of how fast we think we can go and we try to beat that.

The problem is we’re often wrong.

There’s always a gap between what we think we can achieve and what we can in reality. This gap is never on the side of “too slow”.

So we go too fast. If it’s a short race, like a 5K or a sprint triathlon, it’s not a big deal. It’s over in a few minutes.

Once the distances start approaching an hour or more to complete — half-marathons, marathons, Olympic triathlons, Ironman — then we are suffering for a significant part of the day. The stakes are higher. When we go too fast, we reach a point where we have to quit. This might could mean dropping out of the race, but, because many of us refuse to quit, it likely means a long, painful, shuffling slogfest to the finish line.

I believe there’s a perfect speed for every race we enter. The catch is we don’t truly know what it that speed is on any given day. A bunch of factors can affect it — our current training level, how well-rested we are, what we ate last night, the weather the conditions, the course, etc.

There’s also a bunch of potential speeds we could attempt ranging between way too fast and way to slow. Somewhere in between falls that perfect speed and a Bell curve of varying levels of success.

I’ve spent most of my running and triathlon years kind of guessing how fast to go and hoping for the best. I believe more-experienced and/or well-coached athletes have better systems in place to make these predictions thus increasing their chances for success.

Regardless, we don’t really know if we’re going to be successful or until the race begins to unfold. We usually find out at some point during the race at some point before we finish. For longer races, when or where this happens is not typically a since point but more of a gradient that may start sometime after the halfway point.

I call this the Go Zone. Once I enter the Go Zone, I start thinking about going or quitting.

In some cases, I may try to fool myself into thinking I can go faster when I feel like quitting; this has never worked out for me.

But, when I’ve chosen good speeds during the race, it starts to get fun once I can smell the finish line. It still hurts, but my confidence builds: I can maintain my current effort or even go faster and I know I won’t quit. Even though I’m only racing against myself, as we have said, I may begin to pass other people in these later stages. When I pass by a group of people cheering, I get an adrenaline rush.

This feels good.

Yesterday, I had a successful race. I didn’t win. I didn’t make the podium. I won no awards. (Okay, technically, I got a participation medal like everyone else.) I didn’t beat my half-marathon personal best. But I ran the best race I could at this point in my training. That’s my definition of a successful race.

I reached the Go Zone and just knew I was doing well. I went in with a detailed plan of how I was going to run each mile and I stuck to the plan the whole way. Even though I was hurting the last mile, I was within my capabilities.

The feeling of running a successful race is incredibly satisfying. My finishing time and what place I came in don’t really matter. The feeling is the thing I will remember from this day. I hope I can feel this way again.

So, next time you race, go fast — just not too fast.

Photo credit: Kristian Olsen