I ran two 5Ks, a 10K, and two half marathons in five weeks. I didn’t plan on doing them all in a row, the scheduling just worked out that way. Last year I did two marathons, so I wanted to get back into shorter distances. All of the races were in Chicago.
It was a good experience but I wouldn’t recommend doing it. I do think it’s a good idea to cluster races but five was too much. Four races over the course of two months would have been a more reasonable approach.
Pros
- It was great training. I’ve never been able to push myself nearly as hard in a training run as I do in an organized race.
- I set all new PRs.
- I explored a lot of the city.
- I learned more about running races and the logistics involved. For example, I realized the value of showing up an hour early to a race.
- I know which races I want to do in the future now.
- By week three I had a system down and I wasn’t nervous anymore.
Cons
- It was expensive. The race fees, parking, gas, all of that added up.
- It was exhausting. The races and packet pickups took up most of the weekend.
- It was stressful. All of the races being in Chicago made it difficult logistically.
- I had to leave work often to go to packet pickups, my manager was probably slightly annoyed by week 5.
- It was a lot of planning and preparing. I had to put off a lot of other stuff (like cleaning).
- It was hard to wake up early for five weekends in a row. I’m not a morning person. I usually took a nap after the race.
