RTTC #221 How Many Races Should You Sign Up For?

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali breaks down how many races slow, back-of-the-pack, or injury-prone runners should realistically sign up for each year without ending up burnt out, injured, or hating training. 

She shares her own strategy of training for a 10K proof of time months in advance instead of rushing into races unprepared, and explains why shorter races can actually help runners earn better placements for runDisney events. 

Dr. Ali also dives into the physical reality of marathon recovery, why constantly signing up for races can backfire, and how social media can create unrealistic expectations about racing frequency. 

She encourages runners to choose races strategically, focus on enjoying training, and remember that consistency and staying healthy matter.

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  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about how many races should you sign up for? This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for injury-prone Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Alley, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong without feeling broken or held together with KT tape as they cross the finish line. So I am training for a 10K race right now. I'm gonna use that 10K as a proof of time for half marathon or 10 milers in the future. I can't use it for a marathon because the shortest distance you can do for Disney for a marathon is a 10 mile distance. And I do recommend when doing proof of time or aiming for a proof of time that you do the shortest distance allowed for that race that you're going for. So if you're doing a marathon, I recommend training for the shortest race for that. So that would be a 10-mile race. For the half marathon for Disney, the shortest race that will qualify is a 10K. I recommend training for and using the shortest race distance for that proof of time. And some runners will say, no, don't do that. That doesn't make sense. You have to do all these calculations. It's not a one-to-one difference. And that's fine. Do the calculations. Just Google McMillan race calculator, I think is what I typically Google. And what comes up is um, oh, there are a bunch of sites, but the best one that I found is a site that you type in the distance, excuse me, the finish time of a specific distance, and then scroll down a little bit, and it shows you the predicted time of all sorts of race distances based on that finish time for that race distance. So if I put in a 10K, it will tell me my anticipated finish time for a 15-mile or 15K half marathon, full marathon. It has lots and lots of recommendations or um adjustments for different race distances. So just use the calculator. Rumor has it, Run Disney uses that calculator. So if you want a proof of time for a half marathon, you need to get under one hour and eight minutes on a 10K. Okay, great. So why do that over running under two and a half hours on a half marathon? Well, because then that is about half the distance that you have to go and maintain that pace. It's shorter. The shorter the distance, the faster you can go. So let that be um like to use that to your advantage. Okay. So I'm training for this 10K race in September. So when I first told runners that, they were like, why so far out? You're not that far off from that race pace. Sure, I'm not that far off, but I don't know how long it's gonna take me to actually get that pace. If I if I do this race in September and I've been training since May, because for all intents and purposes, let's say that May 4th was my first day of training for that, because that was after the two-week rest and recovery from springtime surprise. That's the first day of pace testing that I did for these new paces for this new block of training. So let's just call it May 4th. And the race is at the end of September. Well, if I train for this and and I get faster than that hour and eight minutes for the 10K, well, that's only gonna work in my favor. I'm only going to be faster on race day. But what if I signed up for a race in June and I just like wing it, you know, I train for six weeks or something, and then just go out there, like, okay, well, let's just see if this works. That A feels too rushed to me. And B, if I don't hit the proof of time, I'm gonna have to find another race. And I'm gonna have to take another two weeks, rest and recovery off. I'm gonna, you know, start the whole training block over again. So why not give myself four or five months to train for this? Maybe it's overkill. I don't know. Let's find out. And I'm using this as a guide to see, like realistically, what does somebody need to do to get this proof of time? And I'm not the slowest runner, but I'm not super fast. Like I just did my new pace test numbers. And, you know, it the actual pace doesn't matter, but I do know some people are curious. So my new easy pace is 5.5 miles per hour. So that's a 10, 55, 10 minutes and 55 seconds as my easy pace. Now it's very interesting because I did my first long run, four miles, at that new easy pace. I did it outside today. And man, was that hard. I'm gonna do a whole recap, uh like a weekly recap of how my training is going. But my training goes Monday to Sunday. So it's not gonna be this episode that I'm talking about week one. But man, that was hard. But I changed so many things. I have new paces, I'm trying new run walk intervals. I uh did it outside. It was hot. Now, of course, for me, it wasn't like hot, hot. Like it wasn't too hot, but it was hotter than what I did on the treadmill for my pace test the other day. I think indoors, like it was probably 65 degrees in my in my garage when I did my pace test. And it started at 78 degrees outside today, ended at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. And so there were just like multiple variables, but like my easy pace did not feel easy today. And I will go into that in a whole other thing. But you know, thinking about my easy pace is 10 minutes and 55 seconds, my anticipated race pace needs to be, I think I figured it out, it's like an average between my easy and my moderate. And so it's really not that far off. I'm not that far away. But I've never gone for a proof of time before. I've never cared before. This is something I want to see. Can I do it? What does it take to do this for myself, for my clients who ask about it realistically? How much faster can I get every month, every six weeks? Cause as I'm going, I'm, you know, I love my data. I love me a good spreadsheet. I'm gonna be tracking this. So we're gonna see if we can get some numbers. Now, of course, this will be a research of one. But if it works for me, why not then have my clients do it too and follow and track those numbers and just get more data? I love the data. And so I don't know how long this is gonna take. Is it gonna go well? Am I gonna have to change up what I'm doing? And and so that this the whole point of today's episode is sh how many races should you sign up for? I promise I'm getting there. There is a point. But so as I was doing this, or as I was gearing up for my training, I was like, oh, September, the end of September for the 10K. That's not, I won't be too far off to then do a half marathon. Now, I'm not doing the half marathon at marathon weekend. I'm not doing the half marathon at wine and dine, because I just I don't care about those themes. And I'm a themes kind of person. Like I want the theme to be good. If I'm gonna get up at two in the morning, I I want to make sure I want that medal, I want that shirt, I want the merch, like whatever, in order for me to sign up for a Run Disney race because we know it's not cheap and it's really hard to get into. So if I'm not like super gung-ho about it, I will, I'd rather somebody else who is like dying to get in actually get in. Now, of course, there are other ways to get in besides purchasing the bib from Run Disney. You can do charity and everything like that, which is wonderful. And there are charities that I've heard that are still available. Don't ask me which ones. I don't know. I just see pop up on social media that so-and-so charity has this bib available. Anyway, I was thinking about, I was like, okay, well, if I do a 10K, I like to do a half marathon in like November, maybe early December. I don't want it to be too cold because although I live in Vegas and it's not too cold in December for some of you, like people who live live in Minnesota. Holy crap, like it's not that cold, but it is too cold for me. And and so I just started looking like, can I do this? Is there a half marathon around? And if it's going to be a half marathon, might as well make it something that is eligible to be used for a marathon in the future. Because as I have been talking about, I may be doing the marathon marathon weekend 2028. And so something at the end of 2026 would be eligible. And the half marathons, all the half marathons I found here locally in that time frame look like they're all hosted by the same company. And it is not timed. It is not chip timed at all. And it they advertise it really weird. It's like first come, serve, first served, like buy a bib, but it's first come, first served. So if the waves are done and you haven't gone yet, like your SOL. It was really weird. Luckily, they they type it the exact same way for each of the races. So I could automatically pick up on that it was hosted by the same group and that it was not chip time. So I was like, I'm just not looking for it. So then I found one in Orlando in December. Obviously, it's not Disney, but it is very well supported, very well structured. And I was like, oh, wow, that could be good. And I'm thinking about it, like I am very strategic on what races I'm doing. So I don't recommend signing up for tons and tons of races. The biggest reason being that you're more likely to get hurt. Uh, you are more likely to get burnt out from training and just not enjoy it anymore. And I know we see on Instagram, on social media, we see everybody's highlight reels and we see all of these races of, oh, fourth half marathon this year, fourth marathon this year, you know, whatever it is. And to me, that's just too much. It may be fine for the elites and the professionals. I don't know because I'm not working with them, right? But it takes, on average, it takes two months to recover from a marathon, from the cellular level, what it's doing to your muscles, what it's doing to your joints, your ligaments, your tendons, your mental capacity, your willingness and uh ability to enjoy training. Like physiologically, it takes six to ten weeks to recover from a marathon for the average recreational runner. So that's two months right there. If you're really fast at recovering, six weeks. If you're a little bit on the slower side, 10, 10 weeks. Average eight weeks. And then you're training for six months. So how are we doing more than two a year? I mean, yes, of course, if you're recycling miles, which if you haven't heard me use that term before, I mean not training, like you don't have a gap in training. So if you go from marathon weekend doing the marathon, you take your two weeks off rest and recovery, and then you start running again at, you know, day 15, but you're running like three miles, four miles. And comparatively to that marathon, that's not a lot on your body. And you don't have to always start all the way back to zero. And you don't have to then follow the 10% rule, right? Which is increasing by no more than 10% each week. You can go three miles, then five miles, back down to four miles, to six miles, to seven miles, and you're recycling miles, essentially is how I phrase it, because you never stopped. And so training can go kind of faster because you don't have to just slowly, slowly increase. So, in that way, you could do two marathons in a calendar year. You could potentially do three marathons in a calendar year. But remembering in the back of your mind that, oh, even though I'm starting off at three miles and I did take my two weeks rest and recovery and I am starting back running, I'm still not recovered from this marathon until two months after the race date. And so if you try and do too many marathons in the year, it cumulatively, the stress and strain on your body, it's going to come to a head at some point. You're gonna hit your ceiling. It's gonna come out in the way of muscle injury, tendon tears, stress fractures, other problems, mental health problems, like just not feeling in it, not feeling happy about it anymore, not enjoying it. You can have just other issues going on just from the stress of your body. And so I just I don't recommend it. And so that it don't recommend it. If a runner comes to me and says, I'm doing all of them every year, I'm doing a full run Disney race season, help me out. I will help you out to be able to do it to the best of your ability with the least likelihood of getting injured, with the least likelihood of burning out. I will a hundred percent help you do that. But if somebody came to me and said, Okay, I how many half marathons should I be doing? How many marathons should I be doing this year? I would say one marathon a year, two, maybe three half marathons a year, maybe, but really two is good. Five K's and 10K's, like if you're a marathoner and and five Ks, you're like, oh, that's easy peasy. That's just a regular Thursday. And to 10K, you're like, oh yeah, like that's, you know, just go out there and I don't really have to think about it. I would say, okay, you can have a smattering of those throughout the year. But with the caveat that pick one or two races a year to be your big races, like whether it be I have a time goal or I have a, you know, a timer or pace goal or I have some kind of ex, I don't want to say extreme goal, because not necessarily extreme, but as opposed to just finishing, enjoy my time, do the thing, right? Because there is something to say about signing up for races to be motivated to train. And I I recommend being careful with that. Like a lot of runners will say, Oh, well, I'm just if I'm not signed up for a race, I'm not doing anything. And to me, that leads toward you don't like it enough to be motivated to keep doing it. So I would say think about that. If you have to be signed up for a race to train for it, you may not actually enjoy doing the thing. And you you just like the metal and like the race environment, which is fine, but that down the line might lead to you signing up for lots of races and then still not training for it. So it there is a fine line. Like you, you don't always train for a race just because you signed up for it. And so sometimes actually toning it back and not signing up for as many races make you want to do the thing more, make you more likely to enjoy training, want to train, enjoy the race experience and things like that. And having said that, if you do need a race to sign up for, and you do need a race in order to keep training, if you're doing that, don't do all the longest distances. Do a 5K or do a 10K, some half marathons, but not all of the races be the same distance. And so that's where like my 10K proof of time is coming in, where it's like I have a very specific goal for that. I want a proof of time for the 10K or for a half marathon. So I want to finish this 10K in a very specific time frame. And then I was like, okay, well, what could I do after that? Because I don't want to just stop what I'm doing. And I know that the plan right now is to train for a marathon 2028. And I don't want, I don't want to wait too long to start training for that marathon. I'm I'm a planner, if you haven't guessed. And so I was like, okay, well, what could I do? I could do a half marathon after that. I could do it in the beginning of December. But the goal for the half marathon wouldn't be a proof of time. It would be like train for that distance so that that distance feels comfortable. And then from there, I could go on to continue training for a marathon, not do a marathon, not race a marathon, but train like I'm going to train up for a marathon and get up to marathon distance. I think I figured out with the math of it that I would get to marathon distance around this time next year, maybe a little bit earlier, maybe sometime in April. And so then I could train up for that distance and then take like two weeks rest from recovery, treat it like I did a marathon, and then do some just like build phase interim training between then and whenever marathon training would start in June. So then I would like just keep going on this forward momentum from the 10K to a half marathon to a quote unquote marathon, no race signed up for it, but just keep training like that because for me, that is motivation. Even if I don't have a marathon signed up for, I really, really want to succeed at the race distance, right? Like I really want to cross the finish line. I have thought about this far enough in advance that I could do 26 miles before official training ever starts. Now, of course, in my training plans, I recommend don't go beyond 20 miles training for a marathon, goofy, or dopey when you're training for those, but that's when you're in the training block. If you want to run 26.2 miles, you know, nine months before race day, that's fine. You can do that because you then have two months to recover from that race, from that distance, 26.2 miles. It's not an actual race, before the official training ever starts. So that's fine. And for me, the idea of not feeling miserable on race day and having this amount of time motivates me to go and train for that. And just what am I getting myself into? And do I want to race a marathon distance? Because maybe I do, maybe I don't. Right now, I, you know, I used to think, no, I would never do it. But now I'm like, I've hit the point with my training where it's like, okay, well, what is the what is the next thing that I should be looking for? And so part of that is this 10K distance proof of time for a half marathon. So getting faster could be the next thing. Or going farther could be the next thing. But notice I I'm not doing them both at the same time. I'm doing them at why. Wildly different time frames. I'll train for this 5K over the next four to six months, four to five months, and then train up for half marathon distance, probably race a half marathon, but not necessarily go for a proof of time then, unless I have this astronomically fast pace because I overshot and just way underestimated how fast I could get in in that amount of time, and then go on to the marathon. But those marathon miles would be super duper slow and just like one foot in front of the other. I don't care how long this is taking me. This longest distance is gonna take me eight or nine hours. And doing it next year at this time, actually in April, would probably be best because, like I said earlier in the episode, it was 78 degrees when I started my run today. And if I'm running eight hours on a on a Friday and starting at 8 a.m., like I'm finishing in the middle of the afternoon. I'm gonna be running through hot, hot hours if it's May. So there's another thing that goes into this, thinking about like how many races should I be doing, how many, um, what month and and everything should these races be? Because you have to factor in the time on your feet and the temperature and things like that. But really, if you need to sign up for a race and you're gonna ask me, I'm gonna say no more than one marathon a year, and no more than like two half marathons a year, maybe a third if we really could finagle it. But if you need a race to sign up for, do shorter distances and make some other type of goal to to keep you active and doing it. It's better off on your whole body mentally and physically to do distances that for you are shorter and aren't as taxing on your body. So keep it, keep it relatively low in the number and it ignore the people on Facebook and social media, Instagram. They're like, yep, doing 75 marathons this year. Like that's the highlight, really. You don't know how they're actually feeling or how they're really doing. They could be putting on a front on Instagram, right? Like you do, you boo-boo. Like, as long as you're putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how fast you're going, no, how much no matter how slow you're going, a mile is a mile. And if you're doing the thing, you're staying active, that's a win in my book. So do what you need to do to actually enjoy it and stay happy doing it. And that might be fewer races throughout the year.