You’ll Meet Like-Minded People
The very first reason you should consider signing up for a 5k race is because it will give you the opportunity to meet a number of like-minded people. Having people around you who are active and support your goals is one of the number one ways to stay committed to the fitness lifestyle. If you don’t have many friends at the moment who are into working out and eating right, this could prove to be rather disastrous on your own program plan. Therefore, it’s time to meet others who share your interest and will help to keep you motivated and inspired. Your 5k race is a perfect way to do this.
You’ll Push Yourself Harder Every Step of the Way
The next reason why it’s a smart move to sign up for a 5k race is because it’s going to help you push yourself harder every step of the way. If you’re just exercising to lose weight, your primary purpose for a session will be to burn calories. However, you can accomplish a calorie burn working at 80% effort or 60% effort – it doesn’t really make a difference as long as you exercise long enough. When performance is the primary goal because you need to run for time now, you will be giving a higher level of effort because it now becomes that much more critical to your success. If you are someone who often finds yourself giving half effort in the workout sessions you do, this is a very smart way to trick your mind into working harder – without you really even realizing you are. Whenever you give someone a performance oriented goal, their effort will typically go up.
You’ll Bring Out Your Competitive Spirit
For many people, this spirit hasn’t been worked since grade school when they may have participated in a team sport of choice or some other competitive event or race, yet it’s still an important part of you that adds excitement to your fitness regime and can help increase your performance as well. In fact, some may find that this competitive spirit is one of the most enjoyable elements of being physically active and after you complete that first 5k race, you are hooked and hungry for more. For certain individuals, it’s one of the top ways to help them stay committed to fitness for life as they now feel like they have a superior reason for training rather than just being healthy and maintaining a goal weight.
You’ll Gain a Sense of Accomplishment
Finally, the last reason to consider signing up for your first 5k race is because it will help you gain a sense of accomplishment. As far as keeping your motivation levels higher go, this simply can’t be beat. The more accomplished you are as you reach goals you’ve set, the more you will believe in yourself that you can go on to reach any other goal that you set into the future. This is referred to as self-efficacy and can make a big difference on your ability to succeed long term. If you’ve set goals in the past that you’ve failed at for instance, you know very well that this may cause your motivation to take a turn for the worse. But, if you set goals and reach them, you now feel like you can achieve anything you set your mind to, so you’re far more likely to keep setting goals and pushing on towards them. This translates to far greater results over the long haul. There you have some of the top reasons why you should consider joining, training for and participating in your first 5k race. Even if you aren’t a runner, there are plenty of other similar races out there that you can do that will spark your interest and get your fitness level up. Check out what’s available in your area or if you really want to make an event of it, look into travel options so that you can take a mini-holiday as you participate in the race as well.
