Runners are often creatures of habit - which is generally beneficial for a sport that depends so heavily on consistency. However, habit can be detrimental if it devolves into monotony. Running the same distance every day is less beneficial than running shorter some days and longer on others. While running the same route every day will not harm your training, you will benefit from regularly varying your running routes. Preventing Mental Burnout A well-structured training plan actually ...
Training Tips
Essential Books for Running Coaches
A weekend or online certification is only the beginning of being a running coach. Run coaching requires a commitment to continual education and refinement of your training philosophy. The best approach? Read everything you can. These books are what I (and from what I have read, many other coaches) consider the essential texts for running coaches who train distance runners on the road. Daniels’ Running Formula by Jack Daniels Daniels’ Running Formula is one of the seminal works of ...
How to Consistently Maintain Running Higher Mileage
For a majority of runners, running higher mileage is beneficial. Noticeable performance gains occur when you run enough to develop a robust aerobic base. However, it is not just higher mileage that improves performance. Performance gains come from consistently sustaining higher mileage. One month of high mileage followed by months of injury will not yield any benefits to your running. (This post is about how to consistently run higher mileage without getting injured or burning out. If ...
What are Junk Miles? (And How to Know If You Are Running Them)
Every run should have a purpose. Most experienced runners will describe to you the transformational moment in their training, when they learned to run their easy days easy and their hard days hard. The transition from junk miles - purposeless, always-moderate training - to polarized training allowed them to fully benefit from their runs. Junk miles are not "bad" but they are not optimal for performance. The exact definition of junk mileage varies based on the coaching philosophy. Some ...
How Easy Should Your Easy Runs Be?
Whether you specialize in the mile or the 100-miler, easy runs are the indispensable foundation of training. In every sound training plan, easy runs constitute a majority of your runs. Why do easy runs matter so much - and how easy should your easy runs be? Why You Should Slow Down and Run Easy Running too fast on easy days - even just a moderate effort - inhibits some of the desired adaptations. If you begin to accumulate lactate (evidenced by breathing hard enough you can ...