Racing Wisely: How I Chose My Fall Race

I had a lot of trouble deciding what races to run this year - not because I was having a hard time finding one, but because I found too many and couldn't decide what to do. This is the first fall since 2014 that I haven't had a half or full Ironman, so it's the first fall in several years that my race calendar has been wide open and I've been able to consider lots of races I've had to put on the backburner. I really had a hard time deciding whether I wanted to do a half Ironman or a full marathon (or both?!) this fall, but eventually I decided on focusing strictly on running. It still feels a little weird that this is my first summer since 2013 with absolutely zero triathlon training, but as much as I've missed it, I've enjoyed the break even more.

With my decision to focus on running set, I had to figure out what exactly that meant. There are approximately 427 fall races that I love or would love to run, but just because I took tri off the table didn't mean I could run all the running races that struck my fancy. There are so many great fall races, and for good reason - it's the best running time of the year - but I had to narrow them down and focus. Most of all, I had to pick one to be my big/goal race. I had one in mind - the Richmond Marathon - but I was having trouble fully committing and articulating why exactly I wanted to run it. 

As I was working through that, I remembered a book I discovered a few years ago - Racing Wisely by Sage Rountree - that deals with exactly this topic. I purchased the book after taking a class with Sage at Wanderlust in 2015, mere days before I began training for my first 70.3. Sage is an OG in yoga for athletes, and I actually bought her Yoga for Runners book (in print!) shortly after I started running in 2011, but I never realized she was such an accomplished endurance athlete and Ironman several times over until taking a class with her. Racing Wisely is a short but comprensive guide to - you guessed it! - racing wisely, from choosing a race and a training plan all the way to race logistics and even post-race recovery.

When I bought it originally I was well into the throes of training for my chosen race, so I admittedly skipped over the first half of the book to get to the race day guidance. Considering that I've found the latter half of the book to be so useful for race prep (I've used it to write race plans for several big races), I wasn't at all surprised to discover that the guidance for choosing a race was super helpful too. I was really hesitant and doubtful of my ability to choose a race since my spring goal half went so poorly, largely because I put basically no thought into the race I chose other than its practicality. This book led me through the thought process I needed to go to in order to figure out why I felt pulled to race Richmond, and whether or not I should listen to that feeling. 

One of the first points Sage makes is to point out the difference between intention and goals. These concepts come up in the race plans I have made previously, so I was familiar with them, but I enjoyed taking a deeper dive into them. Essentially, both are important parts of racing, but they're opposite sides of a coin: intention is private, internal, and helps us to remember to bring the right attitude, especially to the things we can't control. Goals, on the other hand, are public and measurable outcomes, and help us have the ability to control the things we can control. Intention is our philosphical approach to the race, while goals are our practical approach. The combination of these two allows us to meet our goals while maintaining a positive outlook according to our intention. This means that not every race may be a PR, but every race can be a personal best. 

I felt a little lost in my racing and my goals at the time, so I found this section extremely enlightening. It reminded me of what racing, at its core, really means to me. Racing is the perfect opportunity to use the things we can't control as an opportunity for resilience and endurance, which we can then apply to our everyday lives. And, most of all, racing gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we already know about ourselves. Running and racing have been the best way for me to get to know myself, and I felt like I needed to open myself up to that again in order to find my new normal.

Racing puts something on the line. It raises the stakes in a way that demands we bring our personal best effort to the table. 

The next section dealt with the what of racing - the reasons why we do it, what it does for us, why it's important, why it's necessary.

Racing commits you to paying attention, which is hard to do in our daily life, which is full of distractions. In a race you don't stop at a convenience store for a sports drink, or pause by the side of the road to check your text messages. In a race, you are totally in the moment.

This passage hit me like a ton of bricks! As I read it all of my spring races came flooding to memory, particularly the Ocean City Half Marathon. Suddenly all I could see was myself walking along the course, pulling my phone out of my FlipBelt to text my coach about how badly everything sucked. I had always known I was never really present in that race, but as I read those words it really hit me. I felt embarrassed and sad that I had wasted a race by not being in the moment, and it made me yearn to feel that way again.

There was a lot of discussion in this section of the book about the risk of failure that comes along with racing, which I found interesting considering the point of the book is to help navigate what should be a positive and exciting endeavor. The point was that failure is a necessary risk we all take when choosing to run a race, and that in order to be successful, we have to commit to the race despite that risk.

When we mitigated capacity for risk, we also mitigate capacity for joy.

That sentence, perhaps more than any other, made me realize what I had been doing in my attempts to self-sabotage. I had been mitigating my capacity for risk, which had mitigated my capacity for joy. I had thrown in the towel when I knew or even thought I couldn't achieve what I set out to achieve. I had made excuses when things got too hard, saying that I didn't want to do it anyway. And you know, those things might have been somewhat true for some races I didn't this spring that my heart wasn't in, and I give myself grace for that. The trick is to, as Sage says in the book, 

Choose a race that inspires you to throw your whole self into the challenge, a race where the reward is worth the risk.

That was another little kernel that reminded me of all the things I loved about racing but had somehow lost along the way. It was a reminder of the vulnerability that comes with racing, the thrill of opening ourselves up to failure but also of opening ourselves up to success, the infinite possibility of surpassing the limits we think we have. This was the reason I started running and racing in the first place. And as I have struggled to accept that running and racing will never, can never be the same as it was in the beginning, I have come to understand that that doesn't mean there are not still goals to be achieved or lessons to be learned. It just means that progress is not linear, and that that isn't a reason to stop doing something that has historically brought so much joy and meaning to my life and can continue to do so if I just look at it through the right lens.

Even though I already had my eye on a race before I took this deep dive, it still opened my eyes. I have run a lot of races in the past year or however far back you want to look, but other than Shamrock this spring (where I didn't PR - and wasn't planning to - but ran one of my best races ever and came within a minute of my PR), I don't remember the last race I ran just for me. I realized I needed to find myself - my current, 2018, post-Ironman self - through running and racing.

So that left me with the desire to race and a philosophical approach to finding one, but what about the practical side? The flipside of choosing a race that is a worthwhile risk is choosing a race that suits your personal strengths. I thought back to previous races I had considered to be successful and found some commonalities including, but not limited to:

• cold weather, even adverse weather
• a familar course/location
• medium size field
• some crowd support without being overwhelming or distracting

I tried not to let the fact that I already had Richmond in mind influence my list, but either way it seemed to fit the bill. I have run the half marathon 3 times (2013, 2014, and 2016) and have always enjoyed the course and the overall race experience. I have heard nothing but good things about the full marathon and have had it on my radar for several years (in fact, I intended to run it in 2014 but had already run 2 marathons that year, including my first, and got burnt out on training halfway through). I have only ever run flat marathons, so the hillier course will be challenging, but it intrigues me. I am confident that preapring for and conquering the hills will only help me feel like my strongest and best self.  I set my half marathon PR on one of the hilliest courses I've ever run, so I know I'm capable of running a full that isn't pancake flat! Ultimately, Richmond has elements of other races - weather, location, terrain - that I have been loved and been successfult. And, if nothing else, fall is my absolute favorite time to run - it makes me feel so alive and makes my heart so full! I really have no interest in running any other fall marathon out there, and may never run another one again after this since summer training is certainly not my favorite thing in the world.

But for now, I am all in on Richmond (just as soon as I trust myself enough to pull the trigger on registering).