You Start Where You Start

So many people start training for a race by picking a time goal. “I wanna run a 30-minute 5K”. Or “I wanna run a 3-hour marathon”. Then they start looking at training plans that guarantee the results they want. That is not the way to do it.

You start where you start. And you finish where you finish. So many people will plug 3-hour marathon into a website and start doing the workouts it spits out. Whether they are ready for that work or not. You can’t start where you want to finish. You must start where you are right now! Instead of plugging in a goal race in these calculators, you should plug in your CURRENT race time. Do workouts based on your current fitness level and you will get faster. Do workouts based on a goal time and you will get injured. We use the Jack Daniels Vdot02 app to assign workouts. Using your current fitness level based on a current race time, it provides the proper paces for the different workouts to safely increase speed and fitness. As you get fitter, and the workouts get easier you can run another race and adjust your Vdot accordingly. You don’t get to run faster in workouts until you earn it in a race (not the other way around).

Next week I’ll write a bit about the different workouts and where we start all athletes. Just make sure you Start Where You Start, not where you want to be.

Find more of our short articles about training on our website: https://showmerunning.com/running-advice/

If you have any questions about running, training, or gear feel free to reach out to Coach Gregg or Coach Suzi anytime. We are happy to try and answer your questions as best we can.