I have mentioned a few times about the need to keep testing yourself and the best way to do that is by entering a race. Here you are judged on time or distance and your own goals and dreams. There’s no hiding with a number on your chest and you will be judged according to the result married with expectation and prediction. If either of these variables is out there will be consequences on the day (expectation) and afterwards around the water-cooler at work. (prediction)  (Do people still congregate around the water cooler at work and really did they ever ? These days it’d be a ‘Red Bull cooler’ as this seems to be the liquid refreshment of choice <sigh> )

Get your expectation wrong and you’ll be setting yourself up for failure at the ‘pointy’ end of the race , where you will be empty of all fuel and hemorrhaging  time.  It is so easy to start a race too quick as you’re ‘full of beans’  and energy but you must remember you’re racing the whole distance, not just the first 1500m, which is the pace everybody normally starts at.  In a 10k race you’ll find your 5k pace early but at 5k you’ll realize why they call it ‘your 5k pace’ . Suddenly the brain starts to ask for payment for all the chips cashed by your legs earlier in the race,  when it all felt ‘so easy’. When this happens the last 5k seems to go on forever. Trust me I’m talking from experience here and funnily enough will be racing the Bridges 10k this weekend where I found myself in that situation last year.

I remember how easy the first 4k felt and even started to dream about a PB, this of course was an illusion built on a foundation that could not possibly sustain the PB dream. At 6k the walls came tumbling down and I had to endure 2k deep within the pain box, and I mean deep! Luckily I found a second wind for the last 2k of the race, from where I have no idea, but enough to help me to a respectable 12th place overall and 11th male. Yep, I was ‘chicked’.

Lesson learnt , I hope, but probably not truth be told. I’m getting famous for my ‘scolded cat’ start and hanging on for dear life at the end. Is this the way to run races, hell no. Will I learn, hell no ! We each face our demons when we race and this is another reason why we do it. You ain’t going to push yourself to exhaustion in a training run, or at least not on a regular basis.  Put a bib on my chest and it’s on for young and old, all bets are off and my goal is to run faster , over that distance, than I have ever run before. This is why I train for hours and hours in all conditions. (I say in ‘all conditions’, in Perth it’s only really sunny and hot, sunny and really hot or just sunny. It’s a curse.) Training is enjoyable but only a part of being a runner. You also need to test yourself against who you were yesterday , ‘today is all about being better than yesterday.’  Only by constantly testing yourself can you become the best you can be.

Of course this constant testing does not have to be time, throw in distance and try to run further than you have ever run, be this on a weekly basis, monthly basis or even a ultra-type event; 24 or 48 hour race anyone ?  Running the Australia Day Ultra ( http://australiadayultra.com/ ) 100k race the last two years has taught me the benefit of proper pacing and the challenge of long distance racing including the hydration and nutrition needed to complete an event of this length. The activity has been testing but also rewarding in so many ways. Running a distance most people find difficult driving is satisfying and worth a few kudos points around the water cooler, though neither is the real reason you run such a distance. You run ultras to really see what you are made of, to test yourself and confront your fears. Add a bib to the equation and you need to measure yourself against your peers, even more pressure. I’m probably not selling this that well am I but the truth is by putting yourself in these situations you find out about yourself, who you really are. For the most part the reward is liberating and this is why we do what we do. People who don’t run just see a lot of people running around randomly, normally with a look of anguish or pain on their faces, and wonder why they do it? They don’t understand the joy of what we do, they don’t experience the runners high (and trust me people this is real!) we experience when we finish a race and can look within ourselves and think ‘ we could have done no more’, today I am a better person for the experience and have moved another step closer to being the best I can be.

As always I seemed to have digressed from whatever the subject was at the start of this post, I’ve actually forgotten myself so you, the reader, will probably be as confused as I am. Looking back I seem to have started to talk about setting achievable expectations and predictions to avoid failure. Of course I may have written a long winded version of that last sentence and added a photo, as is my way.  To sum up you need to race more (or run longer distances)  and set yourself goals you can achieve and, by doing this,  you will constantly be a better version of yourself, daily, and that can’t be a bad thing.