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The ‘career’ of the average runner right now is a very interesting one. I would argue that there’s never been a larger drive to run longer and longer races. Hell, there’s a whole SERIES of 200-mile races now. As a result (or as a cause?) of this, most runners enter into what I call the “Finisher progression.” They get started running, finish a 10K, and then they finish a half marathon, and then a marathon, and then a 50K, and then a 50 miler, etc. until they find some sort of ceiling. And maybe this is your thing, and you friggin’ love it. And that’s cool! But if you find yourself stuck in that progression and not totally loving it, I want to assure you that RACING SHORT RACES IS STILL COOL!

You see, while there are definite benefits to the Finisher progression if you love it, I think it’s just such a default right now that many people don’t fully consider the costs, and that there is another way.

1. If your race distances keep getting longer, then your training also has to get longer. Your weekly time commitment has to increase, and your weekend long runs also have to increase. At what point does this “more more more!” start to negatively impact the REST of your life?
2. For almost everyone, the training for an ultra is unsustainable. Unless you’re a professional athlete or a young single person, getting in the amount of training that is required for an ultra is almost certainly going to require “borrowing” some goodwill from your partner, your boss, and yourself. As a result, after the ultra life has to swing back in the opposite direction, and you lose all that hard-won fitness.
3. Because of those first two points, many (if not most) of the people on the finisher progression never get any faster! Because the training gets longer, instead of faster, and you typically can’t progress for very long because of the unsustainable lifestyle, you end up never really getting significantly faster.
4. Since “everyone” (yes I’m being hyperbolic here) is following the finisher progression, it’s hard to know if you really like it! Have you ever spent a year focusing on shorter faster races and actually trained to get faster? Most people haven’t, and don’t know if they might like that better.

On the opposite front, training to RACE is pretty cool!

1. It breaks up your fixed mindset about how “slow” you are. Let’s be honest here, if your self-talk often includes “well, I’m not that fast” or “I’m slow,” then you’re cheating yourself out of life experiences. I’ve helped athletes go from the back of the pack to the front. I’m not talking about small subtle shifts in speed, I’m talking about HUGE gains. To put that into numbers, if you currently run a flat half-marathon in three hours, you could probably run a 1:30-1:45 with proper training. Will it take a couple of years? Yes. Will it also take less time out of your week than training for a 50 miler? Almost certainly.
2. It’s just as hard (if not harder) to train to race a 10K as it is to train to finish a 50K. The challenges are different, for sure, but training to go fast is not “easy.”
3. There are some really cool new short and fast mountain running races out there! While it might not be as cool to say that you ran a 7-miler this past weekend, compared to running a 50 miler, it’s pretty damn cool to say “I ran up a mountain this weekend!”

To sum up, I encourage you to at least consider what your focus is. Are you a Finisher? Are you Racer curious? They’re both really cool, but make sure YOU decide what to do. Don’t just follow the group!