2022 Advanced Racing Thread (Read 497 times)

 

Totally agree and I would probably see myself in that category as I’ve never claimed to be an expert and just give my own experiences which people can take or leave.

 

Not really. You do tell people to fire their coach from time to time.

 

I agree with both you and Mark.  There's definitely plenty of opportunities to learn from randoms on the internet, but you have to filter it to your own experience.  I've made changes based on feedback from this forum, and I don't remember any time it hasn't worked or backfired.  I've also ignored advice/winding up like taking 10 minutes off my goal marathon time   Although if I'd gone with that I might have completely crashed and burned and been at the pub earlier.

I remember seeing so many posts on RWOL with… “my coach wants me to do this, but what’s your opinion?” threads.

So many times I could see that the coach was clueless and the internet randoms were right.

 

I remember seeing so many posts on RWOL with… “my coach wants me to do this, but what’s your opinion?” threads.

 

So many times I could see that the coach was clueless and the internet randoms were right.

Internet randos are not 100% right. But neither are coaches. I think Steve's case pretty much proves that, as he led him completely astray by not adjusting for the fact that he was training for a marathon for too long.

This is like 100% trusting doctors or other professionals. If you get a diagnosis that makes 0 sense on what you know, you don't just trust them because they have "experience" and a bunch of other patients. But you don't also question every single thing they do because you read on WebMD that headaches are a symptom of brain cancer.

You make sure to probe with good questions and be your own advocate, neither blindly following them nor needlessly question everything they say.

 

I agree the 5K can be pretty painful, and yeah the mile is even worse.

 

The 10K to me though is so difficult to get "right." I never know when it's go time. I feel like it's at the mile 4 marker, but then I never know if that's too early and I'm going to be in a world of hurt with 800 meters to go. The 5K to me is just a very hard run the entire time, whereas the 10K is this awkward distance of not enough time to ease into things and you don't know when to push.

 

The half is a great race. You can ease into it in the first mile and have absolutely no issues.

Go time is with 400 meters to go!!! Just kidding. Yeah it's a little awkward but I like it for some reason. I guess go time for me is more like 4.5 miles or so. I think the 4 mile marker is early, that's just me though.

mmerkle: IDK the correct answer, just mine; I do the run as planned. If you do that, you ought to feel amazing when it comes time to do the longer run at its regularly scheduled time. I may shift around workouts based on other issues—travel, weather, work conflicts, etc. But not based on feel. Other than going the other direction—turning a speed workout into an easy run if I’m feeling a twinge.

 

Internet randos are not 100% right. But neither are coaches. I think Steve's case pretty much proves that, as he led him completely astray by not adjusting for the fact that he was training for a marathon for too long.

 

This is like 100% trusting doctors or other professionals. If you get a diagnosis that makes 0 sense on what you know, you don't just trust them because they have "experience" and a bunch of other patients. But you don't also question every single thing they do because you read on WebMD that headaches are a symptom of brain cancer.

 

You make sure to probe with good questions and be your own advocate, neither blindly following them nor needlessly question everything they say.

The final sentence is entirely correct and I remember a similar discussion with Darkwave ~12 months ago.  I still adjust stuff my coach suggests from time to time.

That being said, I don't think you start from the point that both coaches and internet randoms are equal either.  On balance, you'd expect a coach to be right more often than an internet random for the reasons I discussed earlier.  Just like you'd expect a doctor to be right a lot more often than some guy on the street when it comes to medical stuff.

 

To sell more copies! I read this maybe too early in my running career and it seemed very advanced to me—it goes into quite a bit of depth and I was a bit intimidated. I later read the Hansons’ book which I found a bit more accessible. That was my first structured marathon plan. After a couple cycles of that, I migrated back to Pfitz as I found his plan more challenging. I think I made more gains with it, and it’s somewhat shaped my training strategies ever since.

 

Also got his book Faster Road Racing 5k to Half Marathon. I’ve never done a full training cycle for anything shorter than marathon, but I’ve used pieces of that book when doing other races between cycles.

I’d have thought the word Advanced would’ve put a lot of people off! The book I dug the most was ‘RUN FASTER - From the 5k to the Marathon’ written by Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald - how to be your own best coach.

Of course I’m just an internet random so you can choose to ignore what I endorse.

Steve - One important thing to state is that whatever we’re saying here is just extra data points for you.

It does not mean you need to listen to what we’re saying, more it’s just more data to analyze, some you can discard, some you can keep.

I like to pain the following image regarding feedback: 

Two people, Mary and Bob are on opposite sides of the character D. Like this: 

Mary   D   Bob

Mary swears she’s seeing a flat object while Bob swears he’s seeing a round object. Both are saying the truth, they just don’t have the whole context to be able to see what’s actually going on.

Not many charity races here either, it turns out you don’t need many charities when you’re not paying USD 15000 for a childbirth 😂

Running 5ks only in summer - This is very silly. The 5K is a serious distance, if you want to do well you have to run it in good weather conditions with proper taper and peaking at the right time, just like any other distance.

Most painful race: This largely depends on whether you suffer more from physical pain or aerobic pain. I’m nearly immune to aerobic pain, so the 1500 is the best race and that’s probably because I’ve never raced the 800s.

Dave - The vast majority of people would benefit more from having a coach. The marathon does not allow mistakes, only freaks of nature like Mikkey can get them right without much effort.

Mmerkle - you’re doing 10ks wrong heh, you should be gasping for air in the last mile. You should be seeing pink Jesus on top of a unicorn at the end of a 10k.

You should cap it at 10 and live to fight another day. You should finish your runs feeling like you left something in the tank. Like Kipchoge says, I’m at 80% during the workouts, at 50% during the easy runs.

Mark - To be fair, telling someone to fire their coach is valid advice.

Coaching - The thing about running training is that it's not simple. Like at all. Different people require different stimulus at different times of their running career and at different times of the year, or how far along they are in their current training block.

I ran from 2012 to early 2019 without a coach. I could have achieved my results WAY quicker with a coach guiding me. I wasted my most powerful years making every mistake there is.

It's not to say that coaches don't make mistakes, they will do that many times, as they learn more about you.

It's then up to you to be as objective and direct as possible when stating what worked, what didn't work etc.

There's also the fact that different coaches are better for different people.

I see a lot of people on these boards that won't run more because they lack the time, like Dave who suddenly was running 100 miles per week due to the lockdown. These people require one kind of coach.

People like me don't run more due to being at the very limit of muscular endurance, simply cannot run one more step. I need a coach to prevent me from constantly crashing and burning for flying too close to the sun, and the best part is that with a coach I can somehow run more mileage.

There's even other people who need constant reassurance from the coach telling them everything is gonna be alright.

It's not easy to find a good coach that fits your personality and goals. But once you do, the results come.

The best part is that you also learn strategies and workouts, 6 months with a coach and now suddenly if you can't afford them anymore you're now best prepared to tackle your own training schedule.