Training for endurance sport isn’t so complicated. We know it’s working if race performance continues to improve without detrimental effect on short-to-long-term health. It’s as simple as that. However, we’re often hit with a overwhelming array of top-tips, ultimate training programmes and quasi-scientific terminology which hinders rather than helps our understanding of performance.

In this article, I’ll explore how bullshit (BS) hides such simplicity. Specifically, I’ll focus on exercise intensity to show how simple it really can be.

What is BS?

As an accredited sports scientist, chartered scientist, academic and coach I’ve learnt to see the world from multiple perspectives. It makes me sad that I often feel that I’m floating in a quasi-scientific sea of BS information which is threatening to swamp the whole endurance sports world. This is a world in which a discourse of obfuscation has developed, circulated and consumed in such a way as to make most people believe that training is way more complicated than it is. It has taken me 25 years to develop sufficient wisdom to realise:

a) that I was often guilty of adding to the level of BS, and
b) what the philosophical basis of BS generation is.

Such wisdom comes with benefits. Specifically it allows me to feel morally and intellectually superior to others. I rant at my long-suffering partner about how others don’t know what they’re talking about. These others usually include NGB’s, coaches, scientists, , well recognised authors and the writers of articles on websites. The ire I direct at these purveyors of inexactitude is proportionate to their perceived status and ego.

BS is a more easily recognised, albeit vulgar word for inexactitude. It originates from the French word ‘bole’ meaning ‘fraud or deceit’. BS isn’t exactly lying, because many bullshitters are well intentioned. They simply don’t know what they don’t know or lack sufficient knowledge to rigorously justify why their beliefs are true. There are other bullshitters who construct their words superficially without adequate reference to the truth and/or present information in tediously prolonged ways that makes them and others believe they are clever.

Many people have built careers on such BS, convincing others to adopt similar beliefs and practices as themselves. It has a very important role in capitalism too, in which it is used to convince us to buy products and services that we don’t really need. My own moral and intellectual superiority is misplaced because I have multiple pairs of trainers for different conditions, several GPS devices with advanced metrics software on them and a bike room as diverse as Imelda Marcos’ shoe rack.

The most effective weapon against BS is intellectual rigour. Whilst we can’t know everything, we can question everything. Why does this work? What are the underpinning principals explaining why it does? What are the alternatives? How does it make me go faster or reduce the chance of injury? How does this training relate to helping me meet the demands of my chosen event(s)? What are the likely long-term consequences of adopting a specific practice?

Regardless of whether you are a world-class athlete, coach or simply looking to break 23-mins for ParkRun, you should ask these questions to others and yourself. Over confidence, lots of technical jargon or lack of humility in responses appear as big warning dots on the BS radar. Exercise intensity is one area that is certainly appears regularly on my radar and is fundamental to our understanding of training.

Understanding exercise intensity and pace regulation

I get incredibly muddled when trying to interpret the language used to describe exercise intensity. Terms like VO2max, lactate threshold, lactate tolerance, threshold, fat-max, aerobic max, anaerobic work capacity, critical velocity and maximal lactate steady state are commonly used. It becomes confusing because ‘experts’ use similar terminology to describe different phenomena, and different terminology to describe very similar phenomena.

Not all experts agree on the best way to measure or describe exercise intensity either. There are multiple different ways to describe training zones and levels too. Consequently, coaches, athletes and sports writers often misinterpret the science, don’t understand underpinning principles or use scientific sounding language inappropriately.

The end result is an excess sharing of BS in magazines, websites and dare I say it, NGB coaching qualifications. Thus, the BS perpetuates and everyone, including me, becomes muddled.

Of course, as the writer here, I want to sound clever by presenting solutions. The first one is to talk about exercise intensity very simply in a way that an 8-year old would understand i.e. walking, jogging, running and sprinting.

With new athletes I may talk of easy, moderate, hard and very-hard, providing further description such as what breathing should feel like or use a scale of 1-10. With more performance orientated types, I’d use race pace or actual pace descriptors such as marathon, 5km and 800m pace. For athletes I coach, I may use specific paces such as 3:35 min-per-km using predicted race times or benchmark runs to calibrate these values.

The second solution is more complicated. It means exploring the underpinning science of exercise intensity, training adaptations and human behaviour. Doing so is particularly difficult because science, textbooks and training manuals use reductionist and disciplinary approaches to explain complex phenomena.

Looking beyond energetics

In my early career, I made the same mistake as many others by adopting a ‘metabolic’ biased perspective on exercise intensity. This means only thinking about intensity and pace in terms of oxygen delivery to the working muscle, relative contributions from aerobic and anaerobic metabolism and their relationship with fatigue. Of course, delivery and use of metabolic energy at the working muscles are very important to exercise intensity regulation. But they’re only small part of the picture.

This picture looks dramatically different if we consider fatigue as an emotion, a complex set of feelings that influence how we think and/or act. These feelings come from how we sense internal (within the body) and external feedback.

For example, we have chemoreceptors that can ‘sense’ the oxygenation (or lack of) of our blood, we know how hard we are breathing and also sense environmental conditions such as heat, wind and gradient.

These factors influence perception of effort. Cognitive processes are important on how we appraise these feelings. For example, I have a number of pet hates that affect my emotions in order:

1) Someone running beside me with jangling keys
2) The heavy breather who sounds as if they are having an asthma attack,
3) The 70 year-old man in an old pair of Ron Hill’s running past me when I’m on for a PB.

Thus, I have to train my mind to deal with distracting emotions as they interfere with my pace regulation. Having a mentally tough day will subsequently make training feel harder than my power meter suggests too. Thus, fatigue and exercise regulation is a biopsychosocial phenomenon (i.e. it involves complex interactions between the body, mind and social factors).

The ‘why’s’ of performance

I argue that it should rarely be described through numbers alone or using wholly physiological terms. Doing so usually implies the use of BS and represents a misunderstanding of performance. However, I’m not one to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. My understanding of exercise intensity and fatigue is still underpinned by physiological principles that are well summarised by a paper by Mark Burnley and Andy Jones on Oxygen Uptake Kinetics. It took me years to get to grips with the principles underpinning this topic but I’ll try to summarise in a few paragraphs.

The use of training zones to control exercise intensity is based on the assumption that energy turnover is directly proportional to pace and that changes in oxygen uptake in relation to changes in pace are instantaneous. This is not the case. Rather, by examining the temporal response of oxygen delivery to the working muscles, we can:

“determine the instantaneous rate of aerobic and anaerobic energy transfer, the mixture and amount of substrate used, and the tolerable duration of the exercise”.

In other words, the VO2 kinetic response tells us lots i.e. how efficient/economical an athlete is, whether carbs or fat is the predominant fuel source and a bit about how quickly an athlete is likely to fatigue within specific exercise intensity domains. With a bit of extrapolation, we can make inferences on muscle fibre composition and lots of other things too. In short, it tells us about some of the ‘why’s’ of performance. More practically, intensity domains are described by words everyone can understand without going into the metabolic details:

Moderate (all-day pace)
Heavy (up to 3-4 hours with adequate nutrition and heat dependent)
Severe (Up to ~30-45 mins)
Extreme (<~2-mins)

Lab tests can provide useful data but are only one part of the puzzle. Photo: Tom Craggs

Focus on demands

As a coach, these domains underpin how I think about training prescription but with only one question in mind: how will training make someone go faster? I’m not thinking how a workout will increase VO2max, improve running economy or pace at lactate threshold.

Rarely will I describe a workout using specific physiological terms, unless a) physiological parameters have been measured directly, and b) using physiological descriptors will enhance an athlete’s understanding of why I am asking them to do something.

For us to talk about the purpose of a training workout in metabolic terms typically suggests a lack of appreciation of the complexity of training adaptation processes. These processes operate across molecular, cellular, tissue and multiple organs including cognitive processes within the brain. Even the very finest minds in integrative physiology have not come close to understanding the complex links between human mind, muscle and fatigue in a laboratory environment, let alone a messy ‘real-world’ one. Rather, the application of science to endurance sport has (understandably) focused on the things that are easiest to measure i.e. oxygen uptake and blood lactate.

I am certainly not arguing that these things are unimportant to training. Rather, I’m suggesting that how they have shaped the wider discourse around exercise intensity and training prescription has gone way beyond the bounds of the scientific evidence and are thus creating illusions of validity. The scientific evidence typically emanates from carefully controlled laboratory environments and is rarely validated in messy ‘real-world’ environments.

What we think, how we perceive intensity and how we act is influenced by many different factors. Things like the weather, road gradient, menstrual cycle and what our day at work has been like affect our feelings, our performance and how we adapt physiologically to training.

Implicit assumptions

Furthermore, there are four implicit assumptions when using exercise intensity training zones:

1) That a relatively constant pace is maintained throughout the workout
2) The energy requirement for an given intensity is met instantaneously
3) That economy/efficiency (the energy turnover for a given pace) remains constant over time, and
4) Specific training adaptions, particularly relating to aerobic and anaerobic systems, are independent and specific to particular training zones.

However, ‘real world’ observations and the study of VO2 kinetics, tells us that none of these assumptions are valid. Despite this fact, most training manuals, including those used to educate coaches about exercise intensity, present ‘scientifically’ constructed training zones that are based on these assumptions being true. Furthermore, specific workouts are usually described in terms of the energy systems engaged i.e. aerobic or anaerobic.

What studying VO2 kinetic responses tells us is that both these energy systems are always ‘switched on’ and in a state of flux, particularly in interval and variable intensity type workouts. Additionally, there are marked individual differences in VO2 kinetic responses and training adaptations within different exercise domains which are influenced by factors such as training status, prior exercise, muscle fibre composition and fatigue.

Thus training effects, fatigue and recovery will be very different between individuals. I therefore argue that it is not overly important to adhere strictly to training zones or levels as long as intensity is broadly consistent with the aims of the workout.

Asking ‘how does the workout goal relate to the performance demands of my event?’ and ‘what are my senses telling me about the intensity I’m at?’ is the priority. More important than adhering to ‘scientific training methods’ is to learn to listen to your body and act appropriately. Of course, there is a need to override these signals, particularly in the final third of a race, and such a skill can be learnt in training.

Conclusions and recommendations

But what do all my musings mean to you? My hope is that they’ve helped develop your BS filter just a little. Key take home messages are:

Be cautious when engaging with any training concepts that are primarily based on physiology or are overly reliant on physiological terminology. The purpose of training is to improve, and the adaptations required to do so involve psychological and social factors too.

The brain is far more powerful than any metric presented on a training device such as a GPS. Learning to ‘perceive’ effort in relation to different exercise intensity domains allows you to moderate intensity based on how you feel. By all means, use a GPS to record your efforts or to do a quick check on your pacing. But do not be dictated to by the technology you use as this will limit performance.

Avoid describing training using physiological sounding words such as VO2max or lactate threshold. I advocate describing a workout in terms of what it means to the demands of targeted events i.e. your race distance pace and use language to describe intensity that an 8-year old would understand.

Don’t worry too much about training zones. There’s no ‘best’ training zones system or ‘best’ way to train. A programme that includes easy, steady, race-pace, interval and fartlek efforts will typically work if you get the ‘doses’ right. That means listening to your body when it is fatigued and pushing on when you feel great.

Embracing pragmatism

My final take home message is to suggest not putting too much weight into what those who advocate overly scientific approaches or dismiss science as irrelevant. They are likely to be purveyors of BS.

There is a continuum of beliefs on the usefulness of science, particularly physiology in endurance sport. Some people believe scientific approaches to training prescription are superior to more traditional ‘craft’ trial-and-error approaches. There are others who believe scientific approaches to represent BS.

Fast Running Coach, Tom Craggs agrees “whilst at first glance Andy’s comments may seem like a simple reductionist message, for me it’s almost the opposite. The message here is exactly to not reduce training to a purely biophysical, energetic process.

The real world of coaching is often doesn’t always predictable a model, we work with people not machines and our role isn’t just to prescribe exercise intensity but to support good decision making, enjoyment and ownership for athletes and a lean towards positive and successful competition.

It is exactly because of the complexity of the interactions between physiology, psychology and social conditioning what we need coaches who understand the complexity of performance, but can still simplify this, focusing on what’s important and keep training as common sense as possible”

Whilst there are degrees of truth at both extremes, I prefer to be more pragmatic says Kirkland. Engaging with and understanding the science allows me to justify what I consider to be BS and why. Practical experience, bound in a deep understanding of the complex biopsychosocial nature of performance tells me that health, wellbeing and performance should be the focus of every training programme.

Dr Andrew Kirkland is a sports lecturer at Stirling University, a sports scientist and a performance coach with extensive experience of working with international athletes. 

The post Cutting through the BS: Exercise Intensity appeared first on Fast Running.

I blame Jeremy Harries. The highly experienced Preston based coach, whose leading elite luminaries included developing the likes of John Nuttall and Helen Clitheroe (both well established at top flight coaching in their own right) had become a leading light in England Athletics coach education and was grilling me on “my coaching philosophy”. A heavy matter.

We were seated in the cafe at Lee Valley Athletics Centre, still not fully recognised as a leading hub in western intellectual development but nonetheless a brilliant hotbed of fast twitch fibres. Although not at our table.

He was pulling apart my third draft. I should have said “Jeez Jezza, it’s just about helping some runners get from A to B a bit quicker and they and I have some fun amidst all the hard graft in the process.

If you want true philosophy then then get a PPE degree from Oxford, become a cabinet minister and tell people to stay at home and wash their hands a lot. You’ve had fricking months to tell me to ditch my Pfitzinger and Douglas and Bud’s session plan notes, and to sort out Plato and Voltaire. Why now?” I didn’t say that though, I wanted not to alienate myself more than was necessary

The Who, Why and How

What he was trying to tease out was the WHO one is as a coach; which will lead neatly into WHY one coaches, in the round ; and the HOW you go about doing what you do to achieve your objectives.

Yes, yes, the person who suggests you bang out a session of 5 sets of 1200 and 400 metres with a miserly recovery between reps and a Scroogeish break between sets may be either a very reserved humble altruist or have a monstrous ego largely channelled to gouging whatever cash is available in the sport, but how that person has evolved their coaching will probably have some influence on how you do and respond to that session, never mind how you fulfil and enjoy yourself in the sport. For the better, in most cases.

Endurance coaches are a really diverse bunch. The whole span of arts mixed with science probably goes a long way to explaining this; nobody is blocked by having the “wrong” background, experience or qualifications. On the surface, in the UK currently, it is disproportionately white and still predominantly male, but drill into the characters, and it’s a full array of humanity, like The Canterbury Tales but with much more accurate watches and less angst about the Pope.

Your host Mr Craggs, the doyen of EA endurance webinars (well it’s good to be a doyen at something) raised on air the question of whether ‘philosophy’ was really a suitable word for something as, relatively, narrow as running coaching. It’s like having a philosophy about Belgian buns, or shoplifting. He didn’t say that in the webinar, to be clear. Just as well really when the subject was Aly Dixon’s tempo sessions.

Because the sport is athlete focused, we are all aware that to get to the kernel of the athlete’s motivation we want rather more than “I’m really keen to improve ” or ” I want a few more ground records on Strava”. (Though if you get the 3000m ground record for the Rieti track, that should cover off the high motivation point). It will in all likelihood be a medley of factors, some weighing more heavily than others.

Varying motivations

So a coach who offers the time worn cliche about “putting something back into the sport” is likely trotting out the baseline, but rarely the full shebang. The specifics of coaches’ motivations and objectives vary immensely across the sector. Once you become heavily committed in it, it can soon become about trying to keep some balance in what is by most standards an unbalanced life.

Yup, like the runners themselves, particularly the ones who will casually refer to 60 mile weeks as ‘just ticking along, not really training for anything particularly’. Arguably male coaches are most vulnerable to this unbalancedness, what with our genetic inability to multi-task.

Is there a message here? Perhaps that for runners being coached it might be enlightening at some stage to learn a little about what makes your coach tick. Their Philosophy even.

David Chalfen is the owner of Run Coach 1-2-1 and coaches at Serpentine

The post Coaching “Philosophies” appeared first on Fast Running.

The numerous athlete blogs sought out by the FR crew since mid March have been great to illustrate the various ebbs and flows of leading enduros over this tough and not brief spell. If you wanted a 3 word summary, glass half full might serve. (Though I believe Lottery Funded athletes need to go for at least 2/3 full, with seasonal progression)

It seems ages ago since one tuned into the virtual 12 stage with Jake Shelley being offered a paltry 6 minutes to commentate on over 3 hours of top end aerobic shenanigans. In typical overachieving way he wrapped it up in 3 minutes, reportedly using the banked 3 minutes for a vocal chords warm down designed by Barry Fudge. Though Alan Storey probably invented it whilst waiting for some papadams in 1989.

The virtual full spectrum

A predictable spectrum of athlete responses to virtual races covers the gamut from “brilliant, I prefer it to the real thing” to “over my dead body” and a kind of bell shaped curve in the main (Do any human traits not have bell shaped curves?).

It’s testament to runners’ sense of social awareness and general Good Eggery that although they are clearly amongst the very lowest risk categories for the worst severity of covid 19 they seem almost universally to respect the rules and guidelines imposed to best contain it (There are reportedly other analyses of said guidelines if you dig deep on the internet. Google ‘Bojo winging it’).

David Chalfen is a coach with Serpentine and author of several books on training for endurance. Photo – Maren Urner www.visual-expressions.net

So, coaching. Yes, yes, athlete focused in that if you see a bunch of guys and women, a tad past their physical prime and just on the acceptable side of dishevelment, reminiscing round a track perimeter without a bunch of athletes on the business side of the railings, it looks, well, somehow lacking.

And as long as we get ample time to fictionalise our PBs to inspire athletes; to bang on how the Reading Half is fine but things were miles better in 1985, to motivate athletes; and to moan about the fing parking ticket we picked up last week, to steer them towards optimal and prudent lifestyle planning; then yes I’m all for athlete focus.

Obviously we wrap the technical stuff around the softer aspects; if there’s anything better than a Beer Mile video to cover off both pacing and hydration strategies, with a side order of spatial awareness thrown in, well, I clearly haven’t read my Daniels properly.

Still a long way short of the real thing

But it isn’t always easy. Two of the absolute big beasts of why coaches coach is that we like spending time with keen runners and we really like watching them and countless others racing, all together, for real. Especially at Parliament Hill.

Virtual things are better than nothing, no doubt, but still a long way short of the real thing. (Speaking of the real thing, the BBC’s ‘live coverage’ of Jacob Ingebritsen’s startling 4.50.0 2000m seemed to amount to live notes from a reporter. I cry foul. I reckon he could push for medal at the Euro U23s if things fall into place.)

Engaging content

In the meantime, big thumbs up to England Athletics for a diverse and very helpful series of endurance webinars and masterclasses set up since the world changed. For marathoners with only 33 minutes to pick up some top advice, Aly Dixon being hosted by that Craggs dude is well worth a listen.

If you want to hear how a highly driven coach can successfully combine maverick tendencies with a structured system, there’s Mark Rowland, and if you want someone else to confirm that there was some heroic and memorable stuff going on around 40 years ago, tune into blunt-speaking Kiwi Rod Dixon.

I’m not sure quite what people expect for those less-than-gargantuan EA affiliation fees and if you think they are steep, I guess you’ve never ordered the partridge and endive on bruschetta in Islington. Right, must catch up on the latest swathe of race cancellations before asking a glute-weak runner why being furloughed still doesn’t offer a suitable time window for those scintillating glute bridges.

David Chalfen is wondering how the Met League will work with social distancing, especially the fiddly bottlenecks.

The post Coaching Blues in (Easing Of) Lockdown appeared first on Fast Running.

Fast running’s Fast10 Ollie Lockley took a look at training load in an article at the start of lockdown and I was keen to reflect on how training load played out as we went through the first months of lock down.

The article mentioned the important issue of quality over quantity; one that can raise many eyebrows as athletes scrutinise other athlete’s strava feeds and change their own training programmes depending on the mileage of those they aspire to be like. 

Heavens some even lift sessions off strava as being right for them and then wonder why they get injured.  As Ollie clearly points out training is not a one size fits all.  The athletes I coach, all have bespoke training programmes, tailored to the performance goals which we have agreed as an athlete-coach partnership.  

The individuality of training

Some athletes can reach their racing goals off 25miles per week with one quality session, whereas others are on 120 miles top end with up to two quality sessions per week. 

I have in the past used the term ‘the moron approach’ which is used to describe the process by which an athlete who is not performing at the level they wish, just adds more on ‘moron’ to their training programme, and yep they tend to break down. 

Find what works for you and be patient

The quality versus quantity sweet spot as Ollie refers to it, or tipping point as I like to refer to it, is all about trial and error and there is no scientific formula to help you. 

Having considered your perfect training mileage, you then must factor in which training phase you are in and the impact that should have on your total mileage (and quality and quantity percentages) as well as where you put those miles in each training block and how best to package them together.  

Taking everything into account

An effective training programme is about the totality of all sessions over a week or a training block and not a single session. 

Often with athletes they will tell me that they can run their easy/recovery runs much faster; I know they can but that is not the purpose of these sessions.  They are there to assist the body to recover from the higher volume or quality sessions so that the athlete is ready for the next key session.  Oh yes rest days are a session of equal importance as are easy weeks.  

The current lockdown and lack of races has challenged many athletes to see the need for easy weeks, which under normal circumstances would be put into a training programme post-race and therefore are easier for runners to justify in their heads. 

To assist with this, I have planned virtual time trials for all of the athletes I coach, at the end of their easy week.  This takes place after every 6 or 8-week training phase which allows us to monitor an athletes progress and the response to their training programme. 

With the extension of this general preparation phase due to no racing, this has become crucial to get an indication of overloading or training fatigue.  

Thinking beyond the training miles

If an athlete presents as fatigued, it could be due to training load but as Ollie also indicated, there are many other factors to be considered such as work-life balance and for many now, it is dealing with the emotional stress of lockdown, additional demands of home schooling, home working and caring responsibilities as well as financial pressures around work security. 

Being in the best place to train well is not just a physical thing; as an athlete, you are a whole person and every aspect of your life must be factored in when considering a suitable training load.  

In doing this, getting buy in from your loved ones is so important. 

The time that you invest in your training, must be understood and supported by your significant others if you are to achieve Maslow’s self-actualisation; the point at which you achieve your full personal potential.

This is not a journey you can walk (or run) on your own.  This also rings true for training and racing goals; they are not the sole possession of either the athlete or the coach but must be shared and any revision to them, clearly articulated and owned by everyone involved.  

Not as simple as some want you to believe

This training malarkey is not as simple as many off the shelf training programmes either online or in books make it out to be, with a one size fits all approach and often limited regard for pacing.

Training is not a flawless single dimensional process and the current lockdown has given us a perfect opportunity to focus on areas for development, which will give us the biggest gains when we get back racing.  Examples of this might be relative speed for an ultra runner, downhill running efficiency for a mountain runner, consistent pacing for a road runner or getting back to enjoying the process of training without the pressure to perform for everyone.  

Continue to work towards yourself as a more rounded athlete and use the time to prepare for race season; it will be back and you want to have made best use of the time you currently have.

RELATED: Sophie Dunnett on the importance of the coach-athlete relationship 

More information about Sophie Dunnett’s coaching can be found here.

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There’s nothing more dangerous than a keyboard warrior with a little bit of knowledge. Fresh on a new journey of information, they take up opinions as fact and are buoyed with confidence. We’ve all likely done it, normally as youngsters, when the world is easy and you know the answer to everything.

The four stages of competence

A commonly used model of competence, often used when talking about development of skills or expertise goes like this: unconsciously incompetent -> consciously incompetent -> consciously competent -> unconsciously competent. Skill or expertise development is less linear in the real world.

The first step on the pathway to expertise is always realising just how little you actually know. Even those who are experts in their field know that they don’t know everything and the constant search for more knowledge is a sign of someone to potentially trust.

On a personal level my own professional development is built around three main factors; learning from experience, continued education and learning from peers and mentors. I know there is still a huge amount I don’t know.

Learning from experience

Quite simply you learn by doing. One study asked two groups to spend a week making pottery. Group one were asked to make just one perfect example. Group two were simply given the task of making as many pots as possible. Who do you think ended up like Patrick Swayze in Ghost?

The first group spent their time perfecting one piece and eventually made distinctly average products. Group two went through a continuous process of trial and error. The students learned from their mistakes and were actually making better clayware by the end. 

Any area of expertise you learn by doing; be it coaching, nutrition or sports psychology. What you learn on a good education course won’t give you all the answers, but will guide you on where to find them. 

Building up a wealth of experience, with reflection, will improve your knowledge base. This is true especially for individual cases, which can vary greatly from a textbook when real life is introduced.

The Endurance Conference is a fine example of like-minded individuals, all with a desire to learn, developing their knowledge together.

Surround yourself with people who know more 

A great way to learn is from others who know more than you do. Finding a mentor can be difficult, but even just a network of specialists in aspects of your own area can be a wonderful learning tool. The idea of this article actually came from a catch up with a Registered Dietician who I’ve learnt plenty from over the years.

There are sports psychologists, dieticians, biomechanists, doctors, research scientists, coaching academics and cross sport experts who make up the group of people I love to discuss, disagree and learn with. You don’t learn much from people who simply agree with you.

As a coach some of my biggest learning comes from fellow coaches too. The combined knowledge and experience of a group is greater than the individual. Even a simple Whatsapp group to share useful information or discuss problems can be a huge help. The fancy name is a virtual “Community of Practice“.

Count yourself lucky if you have a network of peers who share a similar desire to learn, you’ll grow stronger together. Even that network can be constantly evolving. I’m very grateful for the friends and peers that help me grow.

Know what you know

One thing all these people have in common is that they know what they know. The limitations of our own knowledge isn’t a failing, but an opportunity. 

We all might step beyond our own labelled discipline as we develop a wide range of skills, a coach might advise on race day nutrition, whereas a dietician might advise on training and its effect on the diet. But it’s important to know the time to advise the athlete to seek the next level of help from an expert in that particular field. 

Chatting with fellow ultra distance coach Paul Tierney recently we both agreed that we’d much rather trust someone who admitted they didn’t know something rather than fudge their way through to save face. 

It’s also important to be okay with admitting when you’re wrong (although my wife might disagree just how much a grasp I have of this). It would be lovely to say this is just because research in endurance sport is always developing. But it isn’t. There’s no shame in making mistakes in the past, as long as you are willing to learn and adapt.

Add to this the individual context of each athlete and it can simply be that what is right for 99% of the population isn’t right for this athlete. 

Lost on social media

The danger we have these days is that there are too many “experts” on social media. People who aren’t really aware what they do or don’t know, but willing to shout really loudly until they deem themselves the “victor”.

This isn’t how healthy debate works. You have to approach it with the willingness to learn. You might not learn anything new, but if you’re not open minded to the other person’s argument then it’s not a discussion. You’re just WRITING. IN. CAPITALS.

We’re at risk of losing real experts from these forums because a thicker and thicker skin is needed to debate online. Someone adding evidence-based research to the wider world should not be subject to abuse. Period.

If your social media is more than 50% conspiracy theorists then you’re not edgy and most are just being contrarian to stand out.

I don’t have any evidence to back up that percentage though so I could just be a CIA agent who helped fake the moon landings for the lizard people.

Related: Fast Running Performance Project marathon coaching for all.

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In addition to promoting the collaborative administration of training programmes, coaches should also encourage athletes to engage with their programmes at the micro-scale i.e. through understanding the purpose of their daily sessions. 

Personal experience has shown me that training plans devoid of variation, and input from the athletes that perform them, can struggle to achieve buy-in in the long-term.

To explain, if an athlete’s training is controlled by a coach in an overly regimented pattern, and the reasoning behind training sessions isn’t explained, the act of training can become a process of “getting it done”. To avoid this philosophy taking hold, coaches could provide a basic description of the physiological purpose of each session, and how this relates to the broader programme.

These descriptions can be short and simple, and should be adapted to an athlete’s level of understanding, such as: 

“Thursday’s tempo session is designed to increase your lactate threshold. The purpose of this session is to delay the build-up of lactic acid in your legs, and give you the strength to keep pushing towards the end of a race; this will complement the largely anaerobic 3k pace speed work we’re doing on Tuesday.”

Not just about “smashing out the session”

Unfortunately, the “getting it done” mentality has become associated with being a ‘hard man or woman’ and is often lorded (on certain social media sites) as being the bedrock of the golden years of British endurance running.

Although it was acceptable in the 80s, from a coaching perspective, I believe this philosophy can neglect the need to engage the mind as well as the body of the athlete.  For example, in a 10 x 400m session, what should the athlete primarily be thinking about?

1. Getting to the last rep, and completing the 4km of volume; or,
2. Running the session to work on their speed endurance and thinking of that key 3000m race?

Whilst we inevitably look forward to finishing a gruelling session, having the latter mindset (or being reminded of it), I believe, is more conducive to an athlete being able to challenge their perceived limits and capabilities. 

To achieve this level of engagement, the onus is also on athletes to actively engage with their training programmes and make the effort to understand the importance of each training element.

Indeed, we live in a time where we demand results immediately, but the foundations of success are built on more than miles in the legs. You, as an athlete, may be willing to spend 10 hours a week pounding the streets, but how many of you spend half an hour thinking about why you are doing it?

Simply put, the more aware the athlete is of their body and their true limits, the more likely they are to fulfil their potential.

Reshaping the Recipe 

As the cliché goes, variety is the spice of life. However, simply rotating sessions predictably is perhaps not ambitious enough; instead, I advocate for smarter training plans that actively aim to destabilise the disciplinary impacts of training, and the quagmires of motivations they can induce.

The first step should be to reduce the monotony of training, both in terms of locality and the form of the session; this is something I need to work on myself [Although that might be a struggle at the moment – Ed.]

Below I have included a few practical examples, some observed at running clubs in the UK, that could be used to keep runners on their toes:

1. Sessions ‘a la carte’: provide athletes with a menu of sessions when they arrive at training. This will keep athletes on their toes, and reduce the time they spend agonising over splits. Athletes will also be keen to prove their choice was right, after all, nobody likes to be proven wrong.
2. Reinvigorate time itself: no, this is not a flyer from the latest yoga craze, but a move toward changing how time is used in sessions. For example, rather than prescribing 4 x 1km, a coach could ask their athletes to run as many metres as they can over 2:50, 56, 41 and 57 (or an average of whatever their usual KM splits would be). This approach could help to break the often limiting combination of time and distance and encourage athletes to develop a better understanding of their own fatigue.

We just thought a picture of Jack winning a race would be nice at this point in the article. Look how happy he is! Photo: Stephen Lee

Inevitably the introduction of new practices, such as running odd distances, has the potential to cause controversy, and, of course, they can become normalised too.

Therefore, in order to curb the rigidity and stagnancy of repetitive regulation, coaches could look to continually make small modifications to keep athletes alert and challenged. The movement towards unconventional uses of time and distances will also require monitoring from coaches, both to ensure athletes are not overdoing it, or finding the changes too stressful.

In addition to the benefits outlined above, learning to train dynamically has the potential to change the athlete’s perception of fatigue. Here, a movement away from training sessions that are dictated by markers of time and distance could enable the athlete’s experience of fatigue to become more sensual i.e. the athlete should begin to ‘feel’ when they are approaching exhaustion, rather than being intimidated by hitting a mile marker at a certain pace.

Conclusion

This article does not provide a recipe for a successful coach-athlete dynamic, for which there is none; instead, it advocates for the development of thinking athletes.

Central to developing thinking athletes is moving beyond an understanding of the athlete as a machine that can be controlled by a mathematical formula. To achieve this, I have suggested that coaches avoid using training plans as procedures to simply control and regulate the development of their athletes, and implored athletes to actively engage with their training plans to understand the importance of each training element.

So, I’m asking you to be an active athlete, who is continually learning how to break your constantly expanding barriers, rather than one who is working within their perceived limits. 

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In recent years Tonbridge have been a permanent fixture at both the National Cross Country and Road Relay Championships with wins and podium places from every age group from U13 to seniors.

The most recent being the 2020 National XC where the senior men and U13 girls both won to show the depth and range the Kent club has. In recent weeks it has been the Virtual National Road Relays where Tonbridge were 6th in the Women’s 6 stage and 3rd in the Men’s 12 stage.

So how did the VRR Champs come about?

“It started with a conversation on Facebook or Twitter, an idea to replace the National Road Relays on 4th April, but it ended up being a lot bigger than we expected”

Over 5000 runners entered, in local parks, along UK coastlines, around tiny carparks and even at altitude in the US to represent their clubs and be part of the inaugural Virtual National Road Relay Champs last week.

“Initially we expected about 3-400 people. James McCrae led, with great support from Jonny Currie and Massi Dendani, and they asked my opinion on a few things, but we really had to do things by the seat of our pants at times.”

“Open Track contacted us and really had to do a lot of work on the fly to make it work with the big numbers, but they were fantastic.” The full results can be seen here and there’s performances from 13:38 all the way up to 53:46, which is great to see as everyone could get involved.

The event, which has already raised over £9,300 for NHS Charities Together did invoke some criticism but the majority saw the benefits and it certainly brought plenty of enjoyment to the runners involved.

“We moved it to a window of a few days to stop people potentially congregating in the same place,” highlighted Hookway, “everyone might have gone to a local parkrun route or car park. Matt Bergin set up the Just Giving page to add the charity aspect too.”

We need to trust the next generation

“One thing it showed me was there is a mass of passionate, very capable people in their 20’s who deserve a chance to push this sport forward,” said the Tonbridge coach. “We have data analysts, app builders, film makers and a whole host of distance runners who can bring those skills into our sport, help with engagement and getting people interested in distance running.”

People are clearly willing to give their time and expertise to the sport we all love, but sometimes these people are not given the chance to make the difference they can. Many want the sport to remain the way it was “in the good old days”.

“The Tonbridge Twilight Meeting last August were the first since the mid-80s. We found an old programme and someone came to me with the idea. As long as I didn’t have to do all the hard work I wanted to help.”

“We had 12 people come together from the club to make that happen and we all met around a dining table, discussed it and everyone had their jobs. Then we all went away and got on with it.”

Photo: Andy Peat

Even the bus driver is excited

Talking to Hookway it’s clear the community around Tonbridge AC is something he’s very proud of, and rightly so. It’s this club mentality and the trust in each other that allows progress to happen. It’s also why the club are a regular feature in any club relay or XC championships.

“When we go to the National Cross country its not just about the six scorers. We have 200 people travel and maybe 140 of those are running and the rest supporting.”

“Everyone is involved, whether they’re at the front or finishing 1800th, it’s a team effort and they feel part of a Championship winning side. Even the bus driver gets excited.”

It’s obvious that Hookway plays a major part in the success of his club and a lot of that is down to how engaged the athletes stay. “When they move away for work or university I work hard to stay in touch.” and it’s working.

“For the Virtual Road Relays there was a lot of banter on the club whatsapp group. Close to the deadline there were some who hadn’t run yet but they knew their responsibility to the club, but also their club-mates.”

Putting in a shift for the club

One shining example of this is US-based James West. The 3:35 1500m man had an absolutely storming start to 2020 and the Corona virus epidemic certainly put a spanner into the works for his final NCAA year in Oregon.

Now training at altitude in the US, the speedster knew he’d struggle to contribute for the A team in this relay, but still gave it his all and helped the Tonbridge B team to a podium spot.

It reminds of the the quote from US basketball coach John Wooden, ““A coach’s primary function should be not to make better players, but to make better people.” At Tonbridge it feels like the coaching is an embodiment of that. They all work together to be better.

“I was proud of the club, they all got involved. We’re a club that focuses on the championships and they get that,” smiles Hookway, “and whilst it is an individual sport in lots of ways, in my experience, a great requirement is to feel part of something.”

And that is what is clear, from the virtual relays, the championship winning teams and the individual runners achieving remarkable results, Hookway is making sure they feel part of something bigger.

In a time when we might be physically distant from each other, we need to work together and come out of this stronger as a running community if we want our sport to survive.

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In this article I build on the concept of athletic docility that I explored in my previous Fast 10 article, and advocate that coaches encourage athletes to take ownership of their running.

Specifically, I consider how the way we train, the way we understand training, and the way training programmes are administered, can either limit or enhance the fulfilment of our potential. 

At the outset of this article, I should state that the concepts of athlete engagement and ‘coaching mentality’ are highly complex and layered phenomenon, which cannot be fully explored in a magazine article.

Moreover, I also understand that the classic volunteer-led coach-athlete relationship, which keeps grass-roots British athletics alive, is usually a highly time-constrained environment; however, I would say that there should always be time for flexibility and compromise. 

Finally, to keep this article concise, my commentary centres on athletes who already have an understanding of the need for different components of a training programme, roughly when to apply them and, in turn, how they respond to said practices i.e. they are an experienced athlete who races regularly. 

Completing the programme: control or collaboration?

In a previous FR article, Coaching the individual, Tom Craggs explored how training should be individualised to an athlete’s body, motivation, lifestyle, and, crucially, how they physiologically respond to training practices.

Indeed, we know training programmes should consider the FITT (Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type) and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant/Realistic and Time-bound) principles, but how often do we think about how programmes should be administered, and the coach-athlete power relations behind them?

The temptation for many coaches, and especially those who coach at a distance, is to enforce strict control measures to prevent disruption to the programme.

However, such control measures have the potential to bind an athlete’s perceived degree of success too closely to their compliance with a training programme, often to the detriment of the athlete’s enjoyment and development. 

Bound to the king

The classic example of ‘the programme is king’ type attitude, can be found in abundance at Britain’s Universities.

Here club coaches, maybe wary that their talented athletes might be led astray by their newfound freedom or the ‘atmosphere’ that surrounds university coaches, often impress the importance of following their programme to an even greater degree; after all, “it’s how we got to where we are”. 

The ensuing rigidity and repetitiveness associated with a highly centralised form of coach-led control that is intended to ensure compliance (and thereby results), ironically has the potential to produce demotivated, disaffected and at worst disordered athletes.

Here, the athlete’s lack of ownership of their running can, too often, tragically reduce their love of the sport.

Just following the plan

On a practical day to day basis, following a programme without considering the environment it is completed within, can, for some athletes, mean an existence on the margins of a training group, neither fully engaged in the team dynamic nor reaping the benefits of training together.

For example, I have personally witnessed athletes of similar abilities, training at the same time on a track, doing nearly identical sessions (e.g. 8 x 800m and 6 x 1km at 5km pace), but not running together. Is there really any sense in that? Now, more than ever, we all know how difficult isolation can be, and value the camaraderie and training benefit a group can bring.

Whilst training plans should be tailored, and group running is inherently generalised, reasonable compromises should be made to cater for athletes mental as well as physical fulfilment. To put it simply, I take the view that training should be a flexible part of our lives and the situations we find ourselves in, rather than a timetable imposed upon it.

This flexible approach to training, has allowed me to develop as an athlete. Indeed, although I belong to a really strong training group at Cambridge and Coleridge AC, I also train with the Cambridge University group and the various alumni that are dotted about the city to suit my training needs.

Taking this one step further

The next step beyond simply adapting a plan to an environment is getting the athlete themselves to take ownership of these changes and start to understand the reasoning behind the sessions.

It has been said that a good coach aims to make themselves redundant through creating an athlete-centred environment and educating their runners. Thats the second half of Jack’s article coming later this week.

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Like all parenting – whether it’s about restrictions on TV or eating broccoli – it’s easy to have pre-conceived ideas about what makes a good parent. Then you have your own children and find out it’s not so easy in practice.

It’s no different in sport – especially when your children get involved in the sport that you love. After spending the weekend knee deep in mud watching my son at the Midlands Schools Cross Country, the long journey home gave me plenty of time to reflect on what makes a good parent in athletics – and whether I am one.

Knowing when to take a back seat

When you’ve been a runner for many years you think you know a thing or two about it. It’s even worse if you’re also a qualified coach. Even if you’re not, I’m pretty sure we all indulge in glorious fantasies about coaching our child to their first Olympic Gold.

There are some very famous parent-coaches – Peter and Seb Coe, Liz and Eilish McColgan and now the Ingebrigtsen family. But for most children and parents it just doesn’t work. I’ll happily share my knowledge and experience of athletics with my son – when asked.

There’s got to be some advantage to having a parent who’s been a successful athlete. However, I’ve realised when it comes to my son’s running, my job is to be his mum and let his coach do the coaching.

Enjoyment first

Which brings me onto the second most favourite runner-parent fantasy – the one where they storm away to victory in each and every race. Here’s where the reality check is even more important. Even as a pretty good runner, the races I won were far out-numbered by those I didn’t.

Sport is competitive and winning is amazing. But I know that my enjoyment and sense of achievement from running has been based on far more than just winning. As a former elite athlete I know what it’s like to feel pressure. Pressure can be positive and bring out the best in you.

Too many times though, I’ve seen how too much pressure from over-competitive parents, even well-intentioned ones, sucks all the fun out of competition. So contrary to expectations, much as I love the fantasy, as long as my son does his best, runs well and is proud of himself, winning isn’t everything.

However, it’s the nerves that have surprised me the most as a runner-parent. I always got incredibly nervous before my races but found constructive ways to manage them. The gut-wrenching nervous anticipation as a parent is far worse than it ever was as an athlete. What’s more, I can’t let my son see how nervous I am. I’m there to make him feel better not the other way round. All the more reason to let his coach do the coaching while I go off somewhere else and get rid of my nervous energy out of sight.

Jo racing in the European Championships

Being a role model

I now look back with hindsight at my own parents and realise how fortunate I was. At the time I didn’t realise just how immensely proud they were of what I achieved. But equally they never put made me feel that their enjoyment and pride was dependent on whether I won. I only ever remember them being cross with me after one race. However, their disappointment was with my sulky, rude behaviour not my poor performance.

They were always unfailingly encouraging and supportive. And in the case of my Dad – very vocally supportive. You could hear him enthusiastically calling for me on from the other side of the track. But it wasn’t just for me. He shouted on everyone – my competitors and teammates alike.

Petty parental rivalry was not for them. They talked to anyone and everyone. Years later, many of my childhood rivals still warmly remember my Dad shouting them on as they ran. It was a great example of how to get it right. And that’s how I would like to be as a running parent too.

If you’re an athlete, you really hope that your child will take up the sport that you love and rarely consider the challenge it presents – the terrible nerves, the need to be a parent not a coach, reigning in your competitiveness, accepting the difference between fantasy and reality and the miles spent driving them all over the place. I will do my best to be a good parent because it’s worth it all to see my son grow to love the sport too.

Jo is a former GB marathon runner and now fully qualified British Athletics coach. To find out more about her coaching or see what running she’s still doing you can visit her website  or follow her on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

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Starting where I left off, I use a few broad principles to help make a bit of sense of the ‘chaos’ I talked about in last week’s article.

Feedback is critical to a plan working

Flexible planning and individualisation from emerging information are key. No matter what is written down on a ‘paper’ plan, coaching is about people – an individual’s body, motivation, lifestyle and response to training.

Without data and conversations, understanding how an athlete is feeling, understanding the broader context of their life, family, work, stress levels I’m not coaching then I am just setting a plan and the chances of that plan working reduce.

I have done this, particularly when I have tried to coach too many athletes, but just giving an athlete a plan and leaving them to it isn’t coaching and quickly loses it’s satisfaction for coach and athlete.

For me there is a maximum number of athletes I can effectively coach and for me to feel fully invested I have reduced the number significantly over recent years.

Plan ahead, but respect the details

Depending on the athlete and the context they are in I might set a maximum of two weeks of detail at a time. For some it’s day to day stemming out of those conversations principally but also the training data – GPS and HR, HRV, self scored fatigue measurements, RPE in sessions and on broader training, perception of sleep quality, blood tests and anything that might have come from a physio, sports doctor, nutritionist, physiologist (i.e. lab data) etc.

So the overview of the plan gives us the adaption we are looking for but not a formulaic day by day and week by week periodisation.

I find Training Peaks a useful tool to collate a lot of the data into one place and to monitor and track that the adaptation is what we expect or not and go through that iterative planning I mentioned last time.

Individualising the detail

Individualisation also feeds into the sessions themselves. If I am working with an athlete who struggles to stay disciplined with pacing I might be more likely to set plans to time or heart rate. It’s also important for me to see what an athlete chooses to do when they are given more freedom so sometimes ill set sessions with less explicit instructions.

Do they push too hard, not hard enough? Are they good at working to RPE?

A lot of feedback on an individual and their running personality can be gained simply by how you set a session.

What’s in a week?

It’s easy to get very caught up on a ‘training week’. It makes sense – our working lives revolve around a seven day cycle. From a physiological point of view there is nothing special about a week.

The danger of getting too focused on a training week is that you try to squeeze everything you feel you need to develop into that week. Maybe it’s a session focused towards Vo2 max, tempo work, race pace sessions, speed endurance, what about hills, S&C, drills?

The space between quality workouts is absolutely as critical as the hard sessions themselves.

It’s the space between these harder workouts that allow for adaptation.

Without that ‘adaptive space’ and a focus on decent volumes of easy, and at times steady running, the focus becomes just about the icing. Quality sessions are clearly critical to performance but they require time and space to adapt from and a solid foundation of aerobic volume and strength.

Particularly in longer events, like the marathon, where some of quality sessions include big volumes a training week split as hard / easy / hard / easy can often lead to, after initial rapid progression, plateauing or injury.

Whether it makes sense to work off 10 day training cycles, or 2-3 weeks with an easier week after or any other ‘micro cycle’, will depend on the individual athlete and their non-training stressors.

Just because your club do sessions Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday doesn’t mean you have to.

Specificity…

In terms of the broader training overview I see a plan as a meeting point between the individual athlete, and the demands of the key event they are focussing on. Training then becomes a process of moving from general training to more specific training as we get closer to the race.

A demands based approach mean’s really understanding what that individual needs to be good at in order to get the result they need or want.

At the marathon, for example, you need to understand the basic physiology of energetics, thermoregulation, mechanics and strength endurance required to run at your goal pace, as well as the psychological demands they will face. But you also need to understand other individual factors – the nature of the course and the environmental conditions expected for example.

Will the athlete be pushing for a place as well as a time? If so what are the tactical considerations? Will they need to be able to manage fatigue and energy whilst dealing with pace surges for example?

Will it be hot and humid or particularly cold? Are they looking to run a particular goal pace or achieve a finishing place and if so what pace do you feel (based on evidence) will be required to do that?

…matched with the individual

With a good idea of the demands in place I then go through a process of mapping where we are now.

How fast is the athlete running over a range of distances and are there glaring differences? What kind of training have they been doing to this point? What’s their chronological and ‘training’ age? How well does this individual cope in heat? Are they a salty sweater?

The list is extensive…running economy, pure speed, injury history, mechanics, recovery times, psychological considerations, personal values and a whole host of other factors come into it and the only constant is that the factors vary for every individual athlete you work with.

I map these and a whole load of other factors onto a spreadsheet (which I thank Dr Andrew Kirkland greatly for) and outline action points for the areas we feel most need attention, deciding how important / relevant each one us and whether we are able to impact on them.

Next logical step

With the broad overview of the demands and a detailed current picture of the athlete in place I’ll map out a very flexible direction of travel from one to the other. From where we are now, to meeting those race demands. This might include a wide range of training and actions – both training and non-training.

From the training perspective this overview of a plan will generally map out a movement from general speed and general endurance to event specific speed and specific endurance along with what supporting training we might need.

This process is neatly explained by Steve Magness and you’ll see is a pretty common approach amongst coaches from Canova to Brad Hudson and many in between.

Going longer

This becomes slightly more tricky with half marathon and marathon runners. I think there is a lot of evidence and truth behind Dr Stephen Seiler’s research on the benefits of polarised training. There is a good line in this podcast where Seiler says “if you want to over train an athlete or cause stagnation in the athlete just prescribe a lot of threshold training”. I have absolutely seen this reflected in practice.

Athletes who are set a lot of ‘threshold’ running (at or just below anaerobic threshold) progress well for a period before plateauing or picking up injuries and going backwards as a result.

Seiler’s research also shows that many of the very best marathon runners in the world often do very little marathon paced running. However there is a balance that needs to be struck and more most tempo and marathon paced work is still going to be important in the latter stages of training.

I’ll work out broad training phases on this journey from general to specific; an introductory phase, a pre-competition or building phase, a competition phase and a taper, but I wont lay out an exact number of weeks for each. This evolves along with the athlete.

The first step on the road starts with the priorities we determined on the spreadsheet and asks ‘what’s the next logical step?’

A pretty wise voice on social media recently suggested that if you’re running outside 10 minute miles for your marathon then a lactate and vo2 max test, or stocking up on beetroot supplements may not be an essential element in building your training. I quite agree. Determining the next logical step involves asking ‘what’s important now?’.

What’s important now?

Do you have a key limiter you need to get over first? Is there an injury that needs to be fixed before training can build? Is there something mechanical that is limiting you?

In which case we might bring in an expert to help. Are you strong, robust and healthy enough to even adapt to training at all? If not the priority might be nutrition, recovery strategies or conditioning. Do you have a firm enough foundation of easy running to expect faster sessions to have any impact?

Deciding what’s important now means we accept we can’t do everything at once and involves a logical ordering of training and non training priorities.

As we move closer to competition phase I may feel ready to stay to pencil in some key specific sessions working back from race day, for the marathon these can often be pretty big and included every 8-12 days but again it depends how things have progressed.

What’s in a session?

Personally I am not a fan of ‘default’ sessions. We all like to try to bench mark our progress of course and there are logical sessions for particular events but sessions are there to get an athlete physically and mentally fitter.

There is no magic session that an athlete MUST do in preparation for a race or even one that will necessarily predict that they will do in a race. If I want to see how ready an athlete is to race, they do need to race. No heart rate data, lactate measure or pace in a training session can replicate the demands of racing.

It’s coaching ego to think we set better sessions than someone else – the reality is sessions matter less than the sum of the training.

Just copying hard sessions (or even whole plans) you see another successful athlete complete likely won’t work.

Photo of the Dublin Track Club benefiting from training in a good group. Photo: Andrew Coscoran

In it together

Training company does make a big difference though. I’ve got athletes training with training groups all over the country for example the at the Cottage sessions in Battersea, and training with other people can often be more important than the session itself, to a point.

Running with others will adapt your perception of effort, from long reps to easy running, so it’s something to be aware of.

In Battersea, for example, the sessions are well structured and thought through. Good company helps beyond any tweak I might think to add to a session bur clearly it needs to be focused on your goals.

Targeting energy systems

In programming sessions I’m interested in more than just ‘energetics’. I think there is big over simplification of energy systems in endurance at times.

Popping maximum heart rate into a calculator or doing a lab test and working to rigid ‘zones’ doesn’t work for me, because that’s not what is happening in your body, energy systems work concurrently and the picture is more flexible that some would have you think.

It can also lead to a lot of non-evidence based sessions. Aside from that performance isn’t just governed by biophysical processes. We all know athletes that train like champions but don’t deliver on race day. Training also needs to be structured to build self efficacy and enjoyment and avoid monotony (which is another great way to over train an athlete).

Be brave enough to change

Success is very rarely completely predictable or linear. A plan which accepts that allows a circuitous route at times, and is flexible enough to accommodate different rates of progression, is the difference between coaching and just following a map.

If you’re a coach or an athlete you have the ability to adapt your own training on a day to day basis. I’m not suggesting you don’t have a plan, but if that plan is set in stone, then you’re not going to get the best out of yourself.

Are you a fan of Fast Running? Then please support us and become a patreon. For as little as the price of a monthly magazine you can support Fast Running – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

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