I work with online clients, runners in Athletics Boulder and post-collegiate runners. Daily I’m asking athletes to be patient. Every day.
I couldn’t help but smile today when I remembered that one of my mentors often told me that my problem was that I was impatient. True dat.
Hope you’re having a nice Sunday.
Who is the best miler ever? This short article debates the point.
Another short article is one that I wrote on which distance should beginners run – 5k or 10K?
Two discussions regarding the principle of 180 strides per minute – one from Sweat Science and one from my blog (where the comments are the meat of the post, so thanks to all of the commenters). This subject comes up weekly via email or with athletes I coach and I think it’s important to understand how 180 strides per minute works for serious runners.
Finally, a longer article – and a sad one – on Sammy Wanjiru. Big talent, short life.
More posts coming this week. Take care.
Two days ago @macklinChaffee tweeted that the session was more than two hours, but less than two miles.
I disagree a bit as I think that if you added up all of the meters covered in the workout it would be closer to three miles. But not more than three miles for a two hour practice, so he’s basically correct. Why would we do that? Why would we conduct a practice session and not run more miles? A few of reasons. Continue reading
The first thing we need to acknowledge is that in training athletes to become the best runners they can be there are “Many Roads to Rome.” That said, I’m a firm believer that runners should do non-running exercises if they want to to run faster. If you improve your General Strength and Mobility (GSM) you can reduce the chance of injury, and when you reduce injuries you’ll maintain consistency in your training, not missing days, weeks or months at a time. Consistency is one of the most important factors in racing to your potential.
So if you buy into the idea that you need to do non-running activities to reduce injury and maintain consistency in your training, the question becomes, “What non-running activities should I do?” For many runners this question is answered with “I need to get in the weight room, work on my core, and get strong.” That’s a not a bad idea, but it’s not my approach. The weight room has a place in distance running training, but I believe it comes after a progression of exercises and routines that can be done outside of the weight room. Continue reading
I’m in the middle of responding to emails. Here are three things that keep coming up. Continue reading
First, Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers reading this.
The high school and college track seasons are winding down. Here is a quick article about how long it takes to watch (and compete in) a track meet. Hopefully the state track meet in your area has a enough volunteers that it moves quicker than all of the meets leading up to it.
Have you ever thought of cutting a course and faking your race time? This article from the New Yorker is one of my favorite running articles in the past twelve months, even if it makes you sick that someone would do this. Long article but well worth your time.
A couple short training articles I’ve written. Some general running tips and three training questions answered.
Finally, this blog post by Macklin Chaffee, a miler I coach, is a detailed account of his third place finish at the Medronic TC 1 mile (a road mile) this week. Macklin was not very physically strong when we started working together this spring. He is fired up to get into the weight room, but we’ll wait until the fall to do that as we still have gains to make in terms of General Strength and Mobility (GSM) (article and article). Here is Alberto talking about how weak Mo Farah was when they started working together.
Have a great Sunday.
Please read the overview on strides before you read this article. Thank you.
Strides should be an elemental part of all high school training programs. Why? First, you don’t know how fast a high school athlete is until you’ve asked their neuromuscular system to work. Doing 4 x 200m with 200m jog on the track two weeks before the regional cross country meet, when the athletes haven’t been doing fast strides up this point, isn’t going to tell you what the athletes are really capable of. Now, the hierarchy will probably be the same, but if your varsity is running 29.5s for these 200s at the end of an easy run, who is to say they couldn’t be running 27.9s as a group?
So what should be done in training? Continue reading
Matt Fitzgerald is a prolific writer in the world of endurance sports (check out the lists of the books he’s written here).
He has also written many wonderful online articles. Every coaching clinic I’m asked to speak at I link to these two articles – “The Lactic Acid Myths” and “Six Lies You Were Taught About Lactic Acid” – to help high school coaches better understand how lactate should inform their training design.
I learned so much from this podcast and if you have the time to listen I have no doubt you’ll enjoy listening to Matt as well. People often use the term “extremely knowledgeable” and in the case of Matt, it’s absolutely true.
As always, you can listen to this podcasts via iTunes.
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