My spring racing season finished up with the Soldier Field 10 Mile a few weeks ago. I have one race on my calendar in late July and then nothing again until September. So I’m no longer training, and now when I go out for a run, I’m just running. It’s a subtle difference but an important one.
When I’m training, my runs have a purpose: the long run to build up endurance, the weekday easy run to recover and log mileage, and the speed work to (hopefully) get faster. But without a race on the near-term horizon, my runs are just to run. There’s no “agenda” to the run, and I can just go by how I feel – some days I’ll go long, some days fast, some days just out for 30 minutes to stretch the legs. There’s no success or failure to any of these runs as there is no goal.
I believe in training and having a plan and seeing every workout as a chance to improve race performance. But training can be grueling. There’s an element of stress that is added when having a purpose or goal for each run. And that stress is as much mental as it is physical, and I believe that long-term mental stress can be detrimental, making it that much more difficult to get into the get into the mind-set that’s required for a successful run or race.
So for now, I’m enjoying the break from training. I’m still running, and still and enjoying it, but I’m also re-charging my mental batteries so I’ll be ready to train for the fall race season.