Depending on where you live in the world, spring and summer running can mirror the explosion of growth in the natural world.
In much the same way that the grass, trees, flowers, and buds start sprouting up left and right after the winter melts into spring, what was a sparse winter race calendar populated with a race or two in your area per month becomes a spring and summer race calendar with multiple races every weekend.
The choices for races to enter becomes longer than your ability to possibly run them all, and you get to start picking and choosing what and when you will race. Some cities and towns also offer a weekly racing series. These community events often run 8-12 weeks, with a low-key race held once a week throughout the duration of the series.
Weekly race series can be a great way to enjoy the local running community and get in “speed workouts in disguise,” but it can also be physically and mentally taxing to race every single week for a couple of months in a row.
In this guide, we will discuss weekly race series, how to tackle them without burning out, and how to use them to help you run faster.
We will look at:
- What Is a Weekly Race Series?
- Benefits of Participating In a Weekly Race Series
- Potential Drawbacks of Participating In a Weekly Race Series
- Tips for Weekly Racing
Let’s jump in!
What Is a Weekly Race Series?
A weekly race series is an organized running event that consists of weekly races over an ongoing or distinct time period. Parkruns can be considered a weekly racing series because they include a 5k running and walking event every Saturday morning (and a 2k event for kids every Sunday) all year long.
Certain cities and towns put on weekly races throughout the “racing” season, often lasting 8-12 weeks, running somewhere from May to September or so.
Most of the time, these recurring races take place in the same location on the same course every week. Like Parkruns, they are often cross country courses in local parks, consisting of grass, trails, and potentially pavement.
Most weekly race series are 5ks or other similar distances, depending on the available course. The race series may have a specific, but seemingly random distance like 2.8 miles or 3.2 miles.
Like parkruns, runners can run, jog, or walk the race and even though the race is part of a weekly series, you can almost always just enter a single race, if you don’t want to run multiple races or complete the entire series.
In general, the atmosphere of weekly race series events is low-key, supportive, encouraging, and “come one, come all,” rather than highly competitive. Although some runners will certainly be gunning for PRs or course records, there are many runners and walkers just there to enjoy a community fitness event, camaraderie, and some lighthearted, friendly competition.
Some of the weekly race series offer fun challenges like prizes for accurately guessing your finish time, and many keep course records for every single age rather than age brackets, allowing more runners to get in on the excitement of awards.
Also, although not always the case, most race series, like Parkruns, are put on entirely by volunteers, making the entry fees quite low per race relative to most standard race fees.
With that said, there are usually fewer “perks”, like tshirts, swag bags, or even racing bibs, and sometimes the post-race food and drink are potluck style—supplied by volunteers—rather than catered by gourmet companies and local restaurants.
Finally, weekly race series often are “points” events. Runners who compete in the entire series or multiple races in the series accrue points based on their finish places or times.
At the end of the weekly race series, runners who earned the most points win the series and may receive a prize.
Benefits of Participating In a Weekly Race Series
There are many benefits of running a weekly race series, and your personal motivations will depend on your circumstances. Some of the most common benefits of running in a weekly race series include the following:
- Meeting other runners and getting involved in the local running scene.
- Getting practice racing in “low stakes” situations.
- Having support around you for speed workouts.
- Helping you get faster by giving you a reason to run fast and vary your training.
- Saving money on racing fees.
- Earning prizes.
- Running off-road courses and varying your terrain.
- Having an easy way to measure your progress over the season by monitoring your improvements in finish times.
Besides the benefits of the fun atmosphere and structure that a weekly racing series provides, weekly race series are a great training tool for helping you get faster.
You can use the first week as a benchmark race to assess your fitness and then set gradual and progressive goals for each occurrence of the race.
Because you will run the same course every week in a row for a couple of months, you can easily monitor your progress and identify areas of your fitness you need to work on.
Many runners do the bulk of their training alone, either due to logistics and scheduling or because they’re unaware of compatible training partners in the vicinity.
A weekly racing series provides built-in support from fellow runners surrounding you while you push yourself, which can often make running hard feel easier than when you’re trying to do an interval workout on the track alone.
Potential Drawbacks of Participating In a Weekly Racing Series
There are also some potential challenges or risks of running a race every week, such as the following:
- Can lead to overtraining or burnout if you race all out every week.
- Time commitment.
- Potentially making it impossible to safely run other races or explore other race distances during the season unless you take a week off the race series.
In general, the primary concern is that weekly racing can lead to overtraining and burnout if you don’t properly incorporate recovery into your training program and you race your max effort week after week.
Racing is taxing on the body and even if you’re only running 5k, fatigue is cumulative, so maxing out in your effort level week after week can increase the risk of injury, overtraining syndrome, and mental and physical exhaustion.
Tips for Weekly Racing
To mitigate the potential risks of “racing” every week, consider running some of the races as structured workouts. For example, run the first and third mile as hard as you can and take the second mile at a recovery effort or do threshold intervals, such as 5 x 4 minutes at threshold pace during the race.
The race is also a great opportunity for a fartlek run such as one minute hard followed by 30 to 60 seconds easy throughout the duration of the race.
Alternatively, you can race every other race and take the “off” weeks easy, tacking on mileage before or after the race or simply running the race at an easy pace. Perhaps you have a slower friend, partner, or child to run with on your easy weeks.
Giving your body a full two weeks between all-out race efforts can reduce the risk of exceeding your body’s threshold for recovery.
One unique thing about weekly race series as opposed to park runs and most other organized running races is that they often take place on a weekday evening rather than a weekend day morning.
This can potentially pose some logistical challenges in terms of timing your fueling strategies for the race and how you will structure your overall training week around the race.
If you are typically an early morning runner are not used to running after eating over the course of the day, it may take a little bit of time and experimentation to see what sorts of foods digest and settle well at lunchtime on the day of the race and if and when you need a snack before the race.
If you plan to take the races seriously and are trying to get a PR, it will often make sense to shift some of your hard workouts to the evening to mimic the race conditions.
Furthermore, if the weekly race series takes place on Monday nights for example, you might need to shift your Sunday long run to a midweek day like Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday to give your body ample time to recover before the race.
Depending on how hard you run the race each week, you’ll want to modify your training in the days following the race to allow for recovery.
If you treat the race just like a speed workout, then you can resume training as you normally would after any other speed workout, but if you are running them as a maximum intensity race, don’t forget to take several days for recovery—whether resting, cross-training, or getting in very easy miles.
If you are looking to PR that 5k time, take a look at our 5k training resources to help you reach your goal!
