Is this title clickbait? Perhaps…but then again, perhaps not. Without workouts and proper training, success in races is not possible; however, even with incredible workouts and training, performing well in a race is not guaranteed. All that matters on race day is how the athlete performs in that moment, not how flashy or note-worthy the months of training leading up to it were. So workouts are everything and nothing simultaneously; it’s up to the athlete to take what they need from the workout and translate that into race performance.
This has been a struggle for me in the past. I’ve often felt like I was having breakthrough workouts and showcasing a higher level of fitness than ever before, yet falling short of my goals on race day. Practice splits don’t win races, but building confidence and fitness through training does. For that reason, I am working to make every workout intentional. I’m not focused on paces, but instead on fulfilling the purpose of the workout. If that purpose is improving threshold, then I run at threshold, not at the pace that I want to be my threshold (the flashy one that I want to post about on social media). If the goal is recovery, then I run at a pace that allows me to recover, not the arbitrary 7-minute-pace that seems “fast enough for an easy day.” If the goal is race pace, I hit those paces instead of straining to go a bit faster each rep.
Running fast in workouts is a valuable skill and can enhance fitness, but it should never be the goal. The goal is performing in a race, and everything that is done in practice is for the sole purpose of achieving that goal. If the winner of a race was determined by who had the best marks in practice, then we wouldn’t need to have races at all. With that in mind, I’ve been putting less mental energy into the times I run in workouts, and more energy into my long term goals and the process that will help me achieve them. On the rare days that I do something flashy in a workout, I know that it happened naturally, because I’m no longer striving to prove myself in practice. Check out the video below to see how my new process lead me to a great workout (not that it means anything…).
