I love to race.  I think.  Maybe I just tell myself that when lacing up my flats in preparation for a hard effort.  It could be that “loving” racing is a justification of the weekly hours I spend running.  There HAS to be a reason why I do this week in and week out, doesn’t there?

There is no reason to dislike racing.  It is (should be?) the epitome of training.  I know not everyone on the start line of any given race is there to race.  But odds are really good they have had a goal.  Some carrot out there that they have been chasing.  An idea that gets them out of bed, or through that third workout of the week.  A time to achieve, a distance to complete, a place to be earned, a person to honor.  These are enough, with a little bit of luck, to get to a peak race.  When that race finally arrives and the running karma goes your way and you just nail that sucker. . . There are few emotions harder to describe than that.  But how many races do you run where you question it?  Question the effort and the time and the sweat and the frustration.

We can all justify a performance with the common remarks we all hear or make pre-gun.  Been fightin’ a little injury. Work has been busy.  Kids been keeping me going.  Training through.  Do you really believe that though?  Aren’t you really trying to race hard?  You don’t get many chances in a given year if you are like most people.  Despite all the excuses, deep down inside I want to race well.  I want to beat the previous year’s time.  I want to place well.  You know what?  It frustrates the heck out of me when I don’t.

This is of course completely unrealistic.  Due to a whole host of factors, you can’t race well every time.  That would be boring.  It would take some of the mystery of the starting line away.  Which is one of the best parts of racing.

I have an occasional fantasy where I take racing away from my running life.  I strongly suspect that I am a better trainer than racer, though that is hard to admit.  Take away the structure of a training cycle.  Lose the urgency in my daily miles.  Free myself from glancing at my wrist.  Just run.

Does that satisfaction of an effort still feel as good?  Am I able to get a little look at where the limits of my potential might end, or start?  Is my connection to the world around me any stronger if I don’t race?  Do I judge myself as harshly if I have no objective measure of time staring me in the face?

Then there are those moments.  Those moments.  A workout that catches you by surprise.  A race performance that you have had on your bathroom mirror for months.  An award on your counter that maybe you might just happen to show off when friends and family come over.  A shared experience with training partners.  A story told over beers or miles on dawn patrol.  Without truly racing, my running life wouldn’t be the rich spectrum of experiences that I have been able to get out of it so far.  So do I love to race?  Yeah, I think so.