Do I Have To Race If I Run?
To Answer Do I Have To Race If I Run? No you don’t have to race, well not a real person any way. You will probably find yourself racing yourself in some way be it time, distance or a virtual competitor.
If you have read any of my previous words you will appreciate that I kind of fell into running or moreover running adopted me. Maybe I was fostered for a while, it realised it could give me a loving home and then set about completing the necessary bureaucratic steps to welcome me into the family fold.
After such a traumatic upbringing (running-wise) given my inherent lack of pace, I never set out in anyway to compete with other family members once I was re-homed. You won’t find me at a local club in a seniors event * or off on a Saturday morning park run. These really are of no interest to me.
Running is about getting out, losing one’s mind for a while, resettling one’s balance, adding to one’s stats and generally feeling better about things in the post-trot glow.
Stats and More Stats
I will admit guilt in that I love stats. Lots of people do. Lots of men of a certain age do and lots of men of a certain age who run really do. I have tracked runs religiously for decades and used to draw the run via an online map to gauge distance which I’d record in excel, embraced fledging GPS technology which struggled to lock on to satellites up until today where albeit not one hundred per cent accurate or reliable that you can press a few buttons while outside and turn those legs over.
I greedily embraced new websites that popped up and offered promise such as Sanoodi or odd foot pods that were meant to be able to calculate stride length once calibrated.
That stuff is all great and I will pore over the minutiae of my historic runs to spot something of interest. I try not to bore my ever patient wife if something becomes apparent to me.
However, the underlying factor here is self-competition. I have run some courses hundreds of times over the years. I have anally recorded and catalogued them with enthusiasm.
Repeat Runs
I am now able to see a trend of how a familiar course moves through the seasons. I can see health dropping off or leg niggles being overcome. My go to tool on this is strava.com
Strava can automatically pull data from Garmin, Apple, Fitbit etc or record directly into it’s app with your phone. What it does brilliantly called “matched runs”, as seen below is compare alike activities and match them together. This provides a comprehensive illustration of how you fare on a particular run.
The race I have but don’t have is how fast I can run a regular course. I rarely set out to consciously beat myself but definitely do a few things.
Firstly, I never go hard on my initial run of a course as I always leave a bit in the bag for later.
As I say, I don’t often go out with a target of beating my best time, however, I know when I’m in good shape and can get close. Occasionally I run against a pacemaker on my watch or run versus a particular activity. Bizarrely, I find both these a little stressful; that is I run to let go of not to take on. But, if I do take this on and win (not that I’m racing !!) there’s a tangible sense of achievement, I won the race I didn’t enter in the first place.
Strava is probably most recognised as a cyclists app, but it also offers some of that functionality to us runners, namely “segments”. This, in simple terms means sections of a run are broken into user defined segments. Think running around a rectangular block could consist of four segments/sides of the block which Strava knows when you start and finish from your run. This means you can race yourself over a segment or someone else. They just won’t know!
The example above is of a segment along the south bank of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster. I rank at 3601 from 50,000 plus – i’ll take that as it’s a long time since I have run the segment. This is a great way to race people virtually.
Distance Each Year
Then we get to distance. I gleefully see the year ahead and compare to previous years …” how many km will I do this year versus last.. not that I’m comparing .. no not me… just interested.”
I once set myself a target to run 1000 km in a calendar year. No big deal I thought and it’s not compared to those who can complete multiple consecutive marathons. I’m not them but will come to their efforts another time.
It means you have to run approx 2.7 Km per day. Skip a day or save a day for a rest and you double up. In my case, I ran every two or three days. The chart above illustrates missing two days each week and the catching up it introduces.
Go away, go out and get drunk, get sick, have a child or get injured and you are catching up. It’s a challenge around consistency as much as effort.
If you get behind schedule it’s a piece of work to make up the difference.
I failed the first attempt after picking up an injury (leg stress fracture) which required much rest and drove me nuts.
The following year I resumed battle and now had the previous year to compare with so tried to be careful. There were as expected, bumps in the road but as I approached year end I managed to complete the challenge with room to spare.
I discussed this during the challenge with a friend while on a boozy stag do (three days lost) and he was also doing it. His approach was different – just run 20km each weekend.
I haven’t seen him for some time so don’t know how he fared. Within the last couple of years, a former colleague mentioned he was trying to do this and I often enquired as to his progress. I don’t think he ever quite understood my fascination.
Racing a Stranger
Finally, the other race I never have but sometimes do is with a fellow runner. If I ever see a runner ahead, such as I go around a bend and he or she appears in sight, I just have to run them down. They often don’t know I’m doing this so don’t respond and I pretty much always catch them. Bizarrely these incidents often align with fast times on repeat runs that I have definitely not raced against and I also don’t find them stressful. Go figure!
Again this needs a whole episode to itself.
* Never say never
I guess then the answer to the question is no. But and it’s a but with a lot of flexibility, I’m pretty certain in one way or another there will always be a little self-competitiveness. It’s human nature I feel. If you are not wearing a team vest and pushing yourself at pace around a track you will very likely be taking note of at least one measure, be it timing, volume, weight loss or just how you feel post-trot. What’s not to like?
I hope you found this of interest. Please let me know what you race against in the comments.
TLDR – of course you don’t have to, but we all have a bit of competion in us
