What advice can 3 professional runners give to you? (Read 1479 times)

I've finished writing up my 20 pages of notes on the cross country clinic last week: Part 1: Injury Prevention & Treatment (Greg Knapton) http://news.runtowin.com/2008/08/25/xc-clinic-injury-prevention.html Part 2: Nutrition & Fueling (Karen Hodge Knapton) http://news.runtowin.com/2008/08/26/xc-clinic-nutrition.html Part 3: Biomechanics & Proper Footwear (John Rogers) http://news.runtowin.com/2008/08/27/xc-clinic-biomechanics-shoes.html Part 4: The Athlete's Panel (Introductions) http://news.runtowin.com/2008/08/28/xc-clinic-athletes.html Part 5: The Athlete's Panel (Questions & Answers) http://news.runtowin.com/2008/08/29/xc-clinic-athletes-panel.html While the first 3 articles provide some good value, the last one is the best and has the most information. If you have the time, read them all. If not, then skip straight to part 4 if you want to learn a little about the 3 athletes who spoke, and then to part 5 to hear what kind of practical advice and tips you can learn from them. (To be honest, one of them has retired and is now in law school, so only 2 of them are still running professionally. Matt did place 4th in the 5k at 2 separate Olympic Trials, though, and has a 2:17 marathon debut under his belt.)

A valuable contribution, Blaine, thanks for taking time to post this. I have a slightly weird mind and a love of precision in language: in the fourth segment I would have said " the athletes panel...COMPRISED a little over half of everything that was said" rather than "made up" as the latter seems to imply that what they said had no factual basis. Weird sense of humour, never mind. Thanks again!

Thanks for writing that all up, Blaine! I'm going to save it. DS16 and I went to the lecture, too. The hardest things for him to hear from the athletes were: 1. Become a morning person - it will make your life much easier! 2. Get enough sleep! We'll see if he pays attention, I guess! I thought the runners did a great job of talking to the high school kids about their training and gave some good advice, too.

Thanks, great post. I think it is important to highlight the difference between what the pro runners in this article are advocating in terms of "becoming a morning person" vs what most of us here consider to be "becoming a morning runner". In their world, this means getting up at 5:00-5:30am so that their body is ready to do good workouts at 7:30am (this was in one of their comments). So they finish running and acnillary activies around 9:00-9:30am likely. This is WAY different than what we all try to do, which is get up at 5:00-5:30am, be out the door by 5:30-6:00am, so that we can be done running and off to work by 7:00-7:30am!! This is where someone working full-time can make it nearly impossible to train as a semi-pro even if you are willing to dedicate the time. That morning workout kills you. In grad school running 90-120 mpw, I'd do about 4 morning runs of 6-10 miles each week. I did them only on days where my earliest class was 9am, often trying to avoid scheduling anything before 10am. This allowed me to train like a real pro. Now, I have to do the up at 5:30-6, off to work by 7-7:30 routine and it makes it nearly impossible to do consistently.