As a coach or an athlete, we look for guides as to how much work is an appropriate amount for a given athlete. I have mentioned this before, but again, often we discuss the 80/20 rule in training- 80% of our work should be easy and 20% hard. The question then becomes what is hard and what is easy, and in terms of hard, how should that look? So, I’d like to break down some general guidelines. In terms of the 20%, for most of my athletes, that’s going to be anything faster than half marathon...

In the third part of this series, I want to discuss the race itself. In particular, the challenge of the potential weather. This comes in two parts. The first is the time of year the race is and the second is the different start and finish locations.  Today, let’s discuss the potential weather. In a dream year (2011), you get solid temps and a 30 mph tailwind. What’s interesting is that was the world’s “best” time that was not allowed to be a record, but now 2:03 for the men’s isn’t...

In part one, we talked a little bit about timing, but more specifically how training starts at maybe the worst timing of the year- the holiday season. Today, I want to expand once into what will really affect a lot of people- the winter months! Where I am at, in metro Detroit, winters aren’t too bad through the end of December. We might get some snow, but there’s been plenty of times when we don’t have any snow on the ground. The problem is, once January rolls around, the average high...

I read an interesting article from Steve Magness the other day, “How the need to prove yourself in practice can ruin your race day.” In the beginning, he listed some crazy fast workouts he did before a race but then faltered on race day. He came to two conclusions which I thought were great:  * Getting fit is easy * If you are sufficiently motivated, it is easy to train yourself into the ground.  Over the rest of the article, he discussed how it was a coach’s job to...

We have talked a lot about adjusting workouts due to heat and humidity for quite some length, but what about strategies to cool ourselves before or during workouts so that we don’t have to adjust our paces? I wanted to explore this a little bit more as I thought about people attempting last-chance qualifiers in early September and even those racing into the middle of October. I mean, I have run the Chicago Marathon wearing gloves and a beanie in 34 degrees and I’ve slogged through it at 80...

Alright, as summer gets ready to peak, some of you are questioning why you decided to train for a September or October marathon! Many of you are not hitting your paces and question not only your sanity but your fitness levels too! Well, I can assure you that if you can trust that your training is still working, that good things can happen this fall. Now, that is not the big idea here, but rather, what I feel are your best options for adjusting your workouts so that you don’t dig a hole too...

You might find yourself in a situation where you plug in a goal marathon time and the training paces for speed, which represent 5k to 10k race pace, don’t line up with what you have actually raced. What should you do? If your actual race pace is slower than what is suggested based on your goal time, then I would usually have the athlete do the slower pace. Why? Well, we aren’t necessarily trying to improve top 5k speed during the marathon as it’s just not the priority of the segment....

As I write this, we are in the build up for the fall marathon season. For the early October races, we are into about 6 weeks. More advanced runners are cranking into workouts while beginners are just starting more intensity. Regardless of the level of the runner, it is far too early to be complaining of the dreaded “cumulative fatigue.” Yet, so often I will see people saying that they are just completely out of it and not sure if they are going to make it. That is a tough spot to be with that...

It seems like all easy running is the same, and I was in the camp of indifference for a long time, I grew to realize that as we advance in ability, how we approach our easy runs will change with the circumstance. I’ll be honest, I know what I want to convey in this post, but I am struggling with how to present it, or at least get the conversation started. So, let’s start with a common scenario that I see.  * The runner finishes a training segment and takes some down time. They...

Every coach I had, from high school to professional was a stickler for pace. That’s not to say that we weren’t monitoring other variables, but the pace was what we focused on. It’s safe to say that over the years, I became pretty good at judging effort and correlating that closely to paces. To say it’s a skill is an understatement, and from the feedback I get from athletes, is that it’s not a skill that can be learned quickly enough. So, hopefully, we can get you on the right path if you find...

When we talk about long runs, the long run for the marathon is always the primary debate. For shorter races, even up to the half marathon, the long run is further than the race distance or at least up to a big percentage of what you’ll be racing. Yet, for the marathon, unless you go 20+ miles, the long run is going to not going to approach those same percentages. With that, when I prescribe a 16-mile long run, they are hesitant, if not downright defiant about not doing 16 miles.  I...

In my Boston Marathon training plans, I have a lot of specific hill-based workouts. Some straight uphill repeats, some workouts I call “Tired Hills”, some downhill repeats towards the end of the long run, and maybe a few other things. However, I don’t specifically say when a person should get on hills for the marathon tempos. I do this on purpose, but I also recognize that this should be addressed.  First, let’s look at what we are trying to accomplish with the marathon...

So I got done a bit of a rabbit hole the other day. I follow the accounts of My Sport Science and the feed is great if you want to learn anything about nutrition and supplementation for endurance performance. Well, a new blog entitled, “Do ketone esters boost EPO?” And I thought, well wouldn’t that be nice? I knew a little bit about ketones, but more about ketones as a product of high-fat low-carb diets, and not supplementation. Ketone Esters, now that’s another story.  Ketones...

From my experience, you have a deep division in the running world when you mention the word “treadmill.” For some, it’s a necessary part of being able to train during winter, dark mornings, and not leaving children alone in the home. For others, they’d rather fall and break a hip on black ice than submit themselves to “lesser” training on a treadmill. For me, it’s an available tool and as a younger man, I was probably in the latter camp. However, with each passing year, I have less to prove...

Recently, I had a new athlete sign up for coaching and we have them complete a training profile. One of the questions is “what are some of your training weaknesses?” The point of this question is obvious, what do you think you need to work on? However, we are also looking to see if you really think about what those needs are and then really establish a starting point for a conversation about those perceived weaknesses.  Her main weakness was that she said she needed more speed work....

I remember in high school everyone had had these team shirts with “motivational” quotes. My favorite was “Runners have no offseason!” Soooo tough! Looking at it now and then seeing what goes on now, that’s probably not my first choice for a shirt. In high school and college, We went from cross country to indoor, to outdoor track. If you qualified for State Finals in High School or the National Championships in college, then you went all the way to mid-June. Then turned around and went right...

So, I am cruising the social media and lately, I’ve been seeing a lot about the 80/20 rule in running. As I write this, fall marathon training is “heating” up and so it makes sense that this makes the round again. So, I wanted to break this down, how we got to this point and some practical advice around the issue.  What does 80/20 actually mean?  At its basic of definition, it means that 80% of your running is “easy” and 20% of your running is “hard”. That seems awful...

I have made the summer of 2022 the summer of reinforcing heat and humidity adjustments with my athletes. It has had some pretty solid success with those who have taken it to heart. They are feeling better, recovering faster, and aren’t feeling completely overwhelmed with where they are at and how long they have left to go before the fall. Now that I have them buying in more, some questions have come up about some of the details of the heat and humidity adjustment calculator. So, I thought...

If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that I am a big proponent of even to negative splits. When we look at world records and world-class performances, they are usually run with even, to negative splits. The truth is though, that to do this is tough. To actually accomplish this is tough feat in itself. How does that translate in to the typical recreational runner? To be honest, it’s tougher. I created a poll in my Facebook group for runners who were over four-hour...

If you have followed my writing for any length, you will know that you won’t find me prescribing workouts by heart rate any time soon. That’s not to say that I don’t think that using heart rate has no value. I just don’t think that heart rate is the best indicator of intensity guide for workouts. I just feel like there are a lot of factors that go into heart rate and as Jim Vance wrote in his book,  Run with Power, heart rate is like looking in the review mirror. It’s more reflective of what...

Consistency is king/queen when it comes to development. What do you think is more important. A) doing two really good workouts over a 30 day period, but having to miss 5 days of running anything of significance after each one. Or B) string 30 days together of moderate training without interruption? You probably said B, but do you know why?  Below is a graph of the typical response to an SOS type workout. You complete the workout and experience immediate fatigue that is noticeable....

There’s the old adage, “easy days easy, hard days hard” and we see that is the case with the majority of the elite to competitive based runners. When you look at their training, this completely makes sense. Their marathon pace is anywhere from 4:45-5:20/mile at that level. So, it’s not a hard leap to assume that anything close to that on a daily basis is sustainable. The question is though, does that hold true if your marathon pace is 10:00/mile? What about 9:00? Does it make sense to slow...

A few weeks ago, someone in our Facebook group brought up the idea of using an infrared sauna for recovery. I hadn’t thought much about it, and you really see more about things like cryo for recovery and tissue repair. These two things are definitely different ends of the spectrum. Then, as I saw that, I began to notice that a lot of recovery places and gyms were now offering up the sauna as a perk for being in their memberships. So, as curiosity got the better of me, I started looking into...

One of the biggest complaints I get from athletes following the book (link), is that there is no taper. They say that because they are used to going from six days per week down to 4 and their mileage decreasing from 50 miles a week down to 20 miles a week and they don’t do any workouts for two weeks. When they see a taper like that in the HMM books, they panic. Don’t panic! Let’s take a look at the variables involved and what’s going on in the body. While a taper can be highly individualized...