When the Race Really Starts

I just watched American Matthew Centrowitz win the Olympic gold medal in the men's 1500 meter race, the last 400 meters of which he ran in a blistering 50.6 seconds. However, the first lap was run in over 66 seconds, which is extremely slow. How slow? Slow enough that I've run similar opening laps in 1500 meter races when I was in high school. For these Olympic athletes, that was likely the equivalent of a warm up jog. This raises a point I've often contemplated: when does a race really begin? Everyone one is different, but for me the race starts at two different times, neither of which is at the starting line.

The first is when the race starts to become really difficult and challenging. In my experience, this has typically been the last 600 meters of a 1500 meter race or the final mile of a 5K run. Every step I ran before that was really just a way to get me to the start of the challenge. The "true" race is shorter than the entire race itself - it's just a small fraction of the whole distance, but takes up most of my physical and mental energy.

On the other hand, racing also starts months, even years before the gun goes off. Olympic champion Centrowitz was a star runner in high school and had already been running professionally for the last five years. His super fast final 400 meters, according to an Olympic commentator, was partly the result of intense training, which included 8 x 400 meters that he ran in 51 seconds each, the last one in 49. Tanzanian marathoner Juma Ikangaa captured the importance of training and the long-term essence of racing when he said, "The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."