Those new to running soon discover that they enjoy the sport. They are inquisitive about seemingly everything running related. The most often asked question centers on how they can improve. Whether it’s taking on the challenge of their first 5K or seeking a longer-range target such as running a marathon. They want to know all the “how to’s” to help them reach their goal.
My racing experience dates back to the days of $5 entry fees and as an incentive for runners to sign-up organizers offered runners a free T-Shirt! Well, the shirts are mostly still here and thankfully they are a much-improved product too. In recent years some races recognize that many runners have drawers full of T-shirts and the shirts are no longer the incentive they initially were during the early years. Fast forward to current time and see some organizers offering a different incentive to runners. They offer runners to not receive the shirt and in turn pay a lower entry fee!
So come race morning I wake early and find that the last thing I really wanted to do was run a race, let alone a faster pace 5K race. It’s not unusual for me to have “race entry remorse” on race day anymore.
I am going to go way out on a limb here and assume that you, like most runners, are not a world class runner and therefore will never come close to challenging a world, Olympic, national, regional, or similar record. In the world of running, runners instead celebrate their personal records or PRs. It does not matter how fast one ran a race, what matters is how fast the runner ran for a specific distance relative to that runner’s past performances. Since most runners compete in races of various distances, most runners will accumulate their own best finish time for each distance. Thus, the title PR for that distance.
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