Go bad, don’t despair
been there, did that, for the first time ever, last year. I’d reached a point in a race when I realised I just wasn’t having fun any more, and if I wasn’t having fun, why was I even doing it? So I stopped.
After decades of running I’ve also figured out that, for me, it pays to think a bit more about what races I enter.
I’ve been guilty of being impulsive in the past. It usually happens immediately after races, but for others it’s around New Year’s.
I know this because a listener of the Dirt Church Radio podcast, Chris Hope, is the brains behind the NZ Running Calendar that lists races and events all around the country (he also has an Australian version, too).
A couple of weeks ago when co-host Matt Rayment and I talked about how, immediately after the Kepler mountain ultra we’d found ourselves on our laptops late at night desperately searching for our next event, Chris got in touch. I could picture him nodding knowingly, thinking, ‘‘there, there’’. Because traffic on his website after events shows that there’s always a spike the evening of a major event. Take the Auckland Marathon, for instance: ‘‘There’s a big spike the day of the event, and then it continues to stay high for a couple of days afterwards.’’ A ‘‘big spike’’ is about double the number of visitors. ‘‘I also get a big spike at the start of the year as people come back to work in the first and second week of January.’’ And, again, the data don’t lie: graphs show his visitor traffic surging (interestingly, more pronounced in Australia).
So, if you’re one of the people contemplating signing up to a race in the New Year, you’re not alone. But have a think about the reasons you’re entering, and try to ingrain it into your life so it’s not just about the event itself, but about the process of getting there.
And if it all goes wrong, don’t panic. Not all race plans have a Hollywood ending. Eugene Bingham and Matt Rayment are hosts of a trail running podcast Dirt Church Radio. Learn more at dirtchurch radio.com or get in touch via email dirtchurchradio@ gmail.com