How To Race Twice In One Week (And Run Faster The Second Time)

Sixty hours after emptying myself over 5K, I was on another start line trying to do it again.

Everything I know says that is a bad idea. You do not back up a maximum effort in less than three days. You certainly do not do it at 36, three weeks into training, coming back from an Achilles injury.

I ran the second one faster.

Not by much. But faster is faster, and the reason has nothing to do with fitness.

Here is what actually happens when you race twice in a week, and how to make the second one count.

Let us kill the obvious explanation first. Nothing physical improved between those two races. No adaptation happens that quickly. Whatever engine I had on the Wednesday was the same engine on the Saturday, minus the damage.

So why was it quicker?

Four reasons, and all four are available to you.

The conditions changed. The first race was in 32 degrees. The second was 19. Heat is a tax on your effort and nobody pays it willingly. Same effort, cooler air, faster time.

The pacing was better. I knew exactly where the first race went wrong because I had just run it. It went at kilometre four. Second time out I had a plan for that section instead of a hope, and when two runners came onto my shoulder there I already knew what I was going to do about it.

I stopped guessing. After the first race I was not estimating what I could hold. I had just done it. That certainty is worth seconds on its own, because you stop negotiating with yourself in the third kilometre.

That is the real prize in doubling up.

This is the whole game. The fitness is already banked. All you are doing between the two races is not spending it.

Exactly what I did:

• Straight after race one. Twenty minutes very easy jogging, then food and protein inside the hour. Not optional. The clock on recovery starts the moment you stop.

• Day one. Easy running only, fully conversational. I kept my normal easy mileage because my legs are used to it. Yours might be 20 to 30 minutes, and that is plenty. No watch glancing, nothing that feels like training.

• Day two. Easy again, a touch shorter. Legs ticking over, ego switched off. That is it.

• Race morning. The same warm-up you always do. Do not shorten it because you feel tired. Tired legs need more preparation, not less.

Notice what is missing. No session. No tempo. No "sharpener". Every minute of quality you add in those sixty hours is a minute stolen from the second race.

I would be doing you a disservice if I made this sound free.

It works when:

→ Both efforts are 5K or shorter. The damage scales fast with distance

→ You are in decent shape already. Doubling up on a thin base is how you get injured

→ The second race genuinely matters to you. Do not spend this on a training run

It wrecks you when:

→ Either race is a half marathon or longer. Do not back those up, ever

→ You are carrying a niggle. Anything above a 6 out of 10 and the answer is no

→ You try it more than a handful of times a year

That last one deserves saying plainly. This is a card you play three or four times a season, not a weekly habit. I am 36 now, and I can feel that the recovery is slower than it was five years ago. Every runner has a number of these in them per year, and it goes down as you go up in age. Spend them on races that mean something.

And the flip side that nobody mentions: the runners who handle this well are almost always the ones doing consistent easy mileage and one weighted strength session a week. The engine that lets you back up a race is built months earlier, quietly.

I did not break 15. Four seconds off the first time, two seconds off the second. Both misses.

Here is where the second one actually went, because the numbers are more honest than I am:

2:59. 3:01. Through halfway in 7:30. 3:02. 3:01.

Look at those middle kilometres. That is where it went. Off those splits I needed a 2:56 from the last kilometre. I closed in 2:58, the fastest kilometre of my whole race, on the tiredest legs, and it still was not enough. In a field of more than 1,200 runners with people around me the whole way, two seconds stayed out of reach.

But that miss came on legs that had raced flat out sixty hours earlier, and that tells me more about where I am than the first one did. A miss on fresh legs is a fitness answer. A miss on tired legs, closer than the fresh one, is a different answer entirely.

Progress, not perfection. If the second attempt is closer than the first, the block is working, whatever the clock says.

Have you ever raced twice in one week? Did the second one go better or worse, and what do you think made the difference?

Come tell me in the community discussion inside the Running Hub. If you're planning to double up soon, please post the two races, and I will let you know whether I would do it too.

Onwards and upwards,