Races as Workouts (20 Miler Tomorrow!)

Where I work, there's a common saying when someone is being honest about something unpleasant: they'll precede whatever they're about to tell you with the term "full disclosure." For example: "Full disclosure, I was out drinking until 2am last night so I haven't been listening to a word you've been saying".  Or something like that - you get the idea.

So here's my full disclosure: I am in general opposed to the idea of racing with anything other than the intent to give your honest best effort to win.  There is nothing lamer in this world than the guy you beat in a race who then goes on to describe how this was "really just a tempo run for him".  It's demeaning to the actual winner of the race, and it's demeaning to the concept of racing in general.  One of the things I've been pleasantly surprised by post-college is how the nerves before a race never really go away.  Whether it's a major marathon or a local turkey trot, when I'm on that line, the butterflies come back like I'm still a 15 year old high school freshman.

BUT.  I have, on many occasions, made the decision to do a race in place of a planned workout.  And I'm doing it again tomorrow.  When I originally laid out my training schedule a few months ago, I was planning on doing 3x5 miles at roughly 5:30 pace, with 1 mile recoveries at ~6 minute pace, for my workout tomorrow.  It was supposed to be one of my last hard efforts in the last true full week of training.  But instead of trucking around by myself for an hour and a half in crappy weather, I've decided to do a local 20 mile race.  Now I get the thrill of racing, the nice perk of water stops, and a good way to simulate the particulars of the marathon 3 weeks from tomorrow in terms of clothing, warmup routine, etc.

So if you happen to be out on the Leon Creek trail on the Northwest side of San Antonio, be sure to say "hi" to me.

I should hopefully be winning by quite a bit, but if I'm not, I will be sure to not feed the actual winner any bullshit about this being a workout.  Because at the end of the day, the point of a race is to win the race, and if you lose sight of that, well I don't know what to tell you.

http://www.scallywompus.com/site/index.php/events/167-alamo4battleofleonfeatured.

Cheers!