QOTD:
how far in advance do you plan out your races for next year? Not the BIG races (Disney, Boston, NY/Chicago) but the rest of the stuff? Take Covid out of the equation. If it were *normal* times, when do you look at local/regional races and start penciling them into your 2022 calendar?
So for me, I start with that overarching goal. So mine is to run a sub-3 and BQ. That's been the goal for nearly a decade now. That means at least a marathon somewhere on the schedule. I want to find the right race when it comes to that. So something that has ample aid stations, is flat-ish, is historically in the 30-40 degree windchill, is reasonably close by, the training occurs during a cold season. After years of trying different races, I've settled on the Madison Marathon as my best option. Some races have some of these things, but are a miss elsewhere. Like the Disney Marathon checks a lot of boxes for me, but the weather is too variable to plan for 30-40s. Whereas, the Madison Marathon is a harder course, but it's virtually guaranteed to be cold here during the race. The Lakefront Marathon is a good option, better course than Madison, but the weather is slightly warmer (still ideal though), the training is further into summer though. I'd like to see how I perform in the 30-40s in a marathon based on how the 2019 Madison HM went.
So finding that "A" race sort of sets the rest of the calendar. I know I'm blocked up from July-November with the focus on marathon training. So that leaves me December to June to focus elsewhere. There's good research to show that you should diversify your training over the year. Don't get stuck in a continued loop of similar training. So if I've got marathon training from July-November, then I should look at different race distances for the December to June timeframe. I've got a local HM I like to do in June. It's always hot coming out of the winter/spring, so it's usually not an ideal race. This year, I'm doing Princess 5k/10k/HM in February.
The plan at the moment up to November is the Madison Marathon, then December to February is Princess, then March to May is Mile training, then July to November is Madison Marathon 2022. The marathon training focuses on high volume, 5k pacing and marathon pacing. I haven't written the Princess plan yet, but the focus will be on threshold pacing and trying some new workouts I've been toying around with for others. Then the mile training will be a tweak of what I did during Spring 2020 (not doing three hard sprint workouts per week this time). I won't have any "B" races during Princess. The plan during mile training is to sign up for 5ks, and then only run the first mile hard. So I'll be looking for races where there were some seriously fast runners so I can run with them for the first mile alone. I don't have any 5ks chosen in particular at the moment. But know generally they should occur in April/early May when the weather is still cold.
As for the current plan, I'm in the midst of training for the Madison Marathon. I'm considering doing a "B" race 10k. But since the purpose is solely for checking my fitness, I'm holding out signing up for anything to ensure I'm healthy and the weather is ideal. So I've found plenty of local races on different weekends that work with my training plan in the hopes that when the time comes one of them will work out.
So ultimately to answer the question, I plan things fairly far out, and I also plan to wait until the week of the race to sign up for some things. Just depends on the purpose of the race for me.
