Nills Franssens 🇺🇦

There’s a balance between training and racing. Races are fun and valuable for experience. You get better at racing by racing. But the more often you race, something has to give. You can’t expect peak performance unless you taper at least a little and allow time to recover afterward, especially from longer races. That recovery time inevitably takes away from uninterrupted training and long term development of fitness. Last year, from July to November, I did nine races in a 20 week stretch. They were all relatively short, 10k or less, but I only felt truly well rested for a couple of them. That was intentional. I wanted practice at a new distance (one mile/1500m). I also didn’t want to sacrifice too much training just to feel sharp on race day. You don’t need to go all out in every race. A weekly parkrun is a good example. There’s value in treating some races as controlled efforts. You can still gain experience, practice pacing, and become a better runner without digging too deep a recovery hole. Do as many races as you like. Running is a sport to enjoy on your own terms. Just understand that your best performances usually come after several months of mostly uninterrupted training.