Chicago Marathon 2011: Meet Matt Frey

Posted on August 18, 2011 by CoachJay

I feel fortunate the Nike has asked me to coach four athletes for the 2011 Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Coaching long distance has it’s drawbacks, but it’s fun to see the improvement from afar, even if it is in a Google document vs. being there at the track or alongside them on the bike.

The first athlete I want to introduce you to is Matt Frey. He’s extremely serious about his running and he was the runner who came into the program with the biggest foundation of fitness. You can follow his training plan on the site but you can also ask me any questions about his training.

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  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    If you're following Matt's training and have questions, don't hesitate to ask them here.  He ran a solid set of Yasso 800s.  If you scroll to the bottom of this page you can see what he was assigned each day.  

    For instance, he has two workouts this week – Yasso 800s on Wedensday and a long run with some fartlek at the end son Sunday.  This is just his second 20 miler, so adding the fartlek can be considered a bit agressive, but I'm confident he's ready for it.  His training has gone really well and he's bought into doing just two workouts a week.  He's a student and he'll soon be student teaching, and that, coupled with a job, keep him very busy.

    Bottom line is that I really like working with Matt and the other runners in this project and if you have questions don't hesitate to ask.

  • http://www.silkplantsdirect.com/artificial-trees/view-all-products.html silk trees

    Chicago Marathon has been always attraction of athlete. Winning this marathon is esteem thing for any athlete. My best wishes for Matt Frey to whom you are providing training.

  • http://running.chantal13.com Chantal

    I keep hearing about these Yasso 800s.  They must be good.  I read Bart's book, My Life on the Run, which goes into how Yasso 800s are done.  I'll try to incorporate them into my runs when I start training for a marathon next year.

  • http://coachjayjohnson.com CoachJay

    They are a great workout for predicting marathon fitness, but only if you have done some serious long runs and only if you've done a lot of good threshold work.  A good 5k/10k runner could run that workout and get a prediction that they're not able to run.  I love the workout, but I think it needs to be viewed in the context of other marathon work.