Where will I be on March 14, 2020? I have no idea. Yet I need to know in the next few weeks. Not only that, I need to know that I’ll have $2000 available to travel, that I’ll have the time off of work, and that I’ll be in the physical shape to run a marathon.
Booking a spot in the Antarctica Marathon is an extreme example, but planning a race schedule is both a thrill and a challenge for the active runner. There are so many factors to consider–including qualifying times and lottery probabilities–that it can make your head spin.
For first-time runners, I recommend simplifying the process: Pick one race, 6-months or more out, that you want to target, figure out when the registration opens and start a training plan. Find a local half-marathon that’s scheduled for a month or so before the marathon to get the race experience under your belt and be done. Three other considerations:
- Pick a race that offers deferment or transfers. Particularly for your first race, you never know how you’ll feel and first-time runners often get injured. Deferment allows you to push your registration to next year and transferring will allow you to recover some of the cost of the race. You’ll still be out some money, but it’s like insurance, saving you from some of the loss.
- If the race has a lottery-based entry system (London, Marine Corps, NYC, etc.), either find a backup race (something without a lottery and a registration that stays open until a few weeks before the race) or decide to run for one of the official charities that offer entry with some minimum fundraising amount.
- Pick something close to home. It’s a great feeling to finish your first marathon, so it’s best to do it with your friends and family cheering you on and celebrating your accomplishment. Also, the thought of getting on a plane the day after a first marathon seems like absolute torture.
For more experienced runners, the challenge gets harder. Most of the active runners I know try to book races that complete a set. For example, I have a few friends who are gunning to run a marathon in all 50 States. I’m trying to run one on every continent. Others try to complete all of the “majors.” It’s helpful to gain focus during the planning, but for most runners, it doesn’t dictate the entire calendar.
I start with an 18-month plan. I once built one-year plans, but I ended up missing the registration for early-year races. The plan includes what I expect from my fitness and what races might match that ambition. For example, I’m coming out of an 18-month period where ‘speed’ was my focus. I didn’t want to lose the endurance I’ve built up over the years, but wanted to focus more on my pace than my distance. My race program included only one marathon per year (Chicago in 2015 and London in 2016), accompanied by about 12 half-marathons, and my first 10k trail series.
For the next 18 months, the goal is to apply that speed training to a longer distance. I’m targeting 2-3 Marathons per year (including, maybe, an ultra) with more casual halfs thrown in as I feel like it. The Marathons require the most planning (and require genuine recovery), so I keep a three-year log of the races I’m interested in (with registration dates as well as race dates) and work around that. I also like to do one foreign travel marathon per year, so those are the anchors that the rest of my race calendar gets wrapped around.
The biggest challenge for me is the lottery entries. If I do another charity run, I’m saving it for Boston, for which qualifying looks like a pipe-dream. Most of the lotteries make you wait months to find out if you’re in or not. By that time, most of the other entries for the premier races have closed. Two years ago, I signed up for both NYC and Chicago (both lotteries) and hoped I’d get into one of them (both have deferral programs). I didn’t get lucky for New York, but Chicago came through, so the plan worked. This year, I’m trying again for NYC (third time the charm?), but also trying to find some smaller races with later registration dates as a back-up.