Major Key To Success & Happiness In Running

For the competitive runner, one of the major keys to success & happiness in running is understanding what we are trying to accomplish in training and how we are going about doing it.  By understanding this we can implement our training more effectively and catch and correct mistakes more quickly so that our training becomes more effective.  This in turn leads to improvements in fitness and success on race day which builds confidence and happiness. And it is often reassuring to us to understand the path we are on and how it will get us to where we want to go.  

"Stress specifically enough to earn a certain adaptation, then recover sufficiently enough to receive that adaptation."

This simple, succinct one sentence, when understood, can go a long way in explaining what we are doing and how we are best off approaching our training.  And this can help lead us to happiness and success.

As I talked about in an blog entry earlier this year, training for running (and all physical training) centers around the Stress and Recover Principle.  We stress the body in a specific way to elicit a desired adaptation (such as improve our VO2 Max or lactate threshold or endurance) and then we let the body recover from that stress and once it has we achieve that adaptation and become fitter than we were before.

When we get frustrated in training and stop seeing improvement or get run down or worn out, all things that can cause unhappiness, we need to objectively analyze each part of this stress and recover process and see where the problem is.  By identifying the issue early on we can correct it and get back on the road to success and ultimately happiness.

So lets make a check list of the major things to look at when things start going awry:

Stress Side:
- Are the stresses specifically focused enough to elicit the desire adaptations?
- Are you targeting the right adaptations for the demands of our goal race?
- Are your workouts too big or too hard, thus requiring too much recovery time?
- Are you executing the workouts in the correct manner?
- Are you doing your stress workout before you have adequately recovered from our last stress workout?

Recover Side:
- Are you running too much to properly recover in a reasonable time?
- Are you running too fast to properly recover in a reasonable time?
- Do you have other life stresses (work/life/family/travel/schedule) keeping you from recovering as quickly?
- Are you running too slow on our recovery days (i.e. hurting our bio-mechanical efficiency & habits)?
- Are you running to short on our recovery days (i.e. allowing certain adaptations to back-slide)
- Are you properly hydrated so that the body can recover quickly?
- Are you properly fueled so that your body has the building blocks needed to recover quickly?
- Are you getting enough sleep/rest to be able to recover well?
- Do you have any vitamin or mineral deficiency or other health issues that may be compromising your ability to recover quickly?

The more predictable our life schedule is the easier it is to manage all these aspects, but life is not always predictable or routine so when something comes up we need to recognize early on how that will effect our stress and recover principle and adjust our training accordingly.  It is not a matter of toughing it out it and getting by like we all try and do sometimes, it is a matter of honoring the stress & recover principle and optimizing it to get what we are after (improved fitness).  Sometimes that may mean an extra recovery day when needed or by cutting back on a run or workout.  But better to do that then trudge on and get sick, hurt or burned out or even just go stagnant.

If you have a coach they can be a great help to you and managing many aspects of this.  They should know what workouts to do and when and how much is doable and how much is too much on the recovery days, but they need you help and input as well.  You know all the factors they can't see such as sleep, hydration, diet, supplements, work/life stresses.  So communicate well with your coach to ensure you are honoring and maximizing the stress and recover principle and thus promoting your success and happiness in the sport.

Happy Running,

Coach Mark Hadley

Running Social or Solitary - It's All Good

Solitary Run

Some runners are social runners, they love to meet up with a group of other runners for the majority of their runs and workouts.  They relish the comradery of running with others and the chance to socially interact with and catch up with friends.  This can be an awesome experience that heightens the running experience for them.

Some runners are solitary runners, who love to do the majority or all their runs alone.  They relish the peace and solitude of solo runs and the chance to have some alone time with their thoughts while doing something healthy for their body.  This also can be an awesome experience that brings them peace mentally as well as physical health.  

Then there are some runners who are a combination between the two, they sometimes run alone and sometimes run with a group. They have a good mix between the 2 and in some ways get many of the benefits of each.

Their is no right or wrong way to run, with others or alone.  It is all a matter of personal preference, the opportunities available to you, and what your goals are with your running.  

I grew up running by myself mainly as a kid before I entered high school as there simply wasn't anyone to run with.  Then in high school I still usually ran by myself as no one on my high school teams could keep up (I went to a small high school - 87 in my graduating class).  So I learned to appreciate running alone.  After college, I again ran mainly by myself, and enjoyed my quiet time to think and reflect and day dream while I ran.  I did and still do enjoy running with others on occasion but I find running alone a peaceful respite in an otherwise hectic social world. Also I was a very competitive runner for many of my younger years, and it was always more important to me to follow my training plan than to alter it to accommodate others.  I enjoyed the social aspects of running but the competitive aspects were more important to me.  But I do understand and appreciate that the reverse it true for many runners, that they appreciate the competitive aspects of running but value the social aspects just as much or more.  Different strokes for different folks.

I guess my point to this blog is that it is OK to run alone and OK to run socially and we shouldn't put-down or judge someone for desiring to do one or the other.  Recently I came across a group of social runners who thought it almost criminal to run alone and they even made fun of and chastised those who chose to run alone calling them "anti-social outcasts".  I am sure there are similar people who run alone who simply don't understand or appreciate social runners.  This is so crazy to me, that people would judge and criticize someone else simply because they desire to do something differently than they themselves would do it. This type of intolerance is what spreads hate and bigotry in society. Come on now, we are all runners and we each are free to pursue it how we wish. Support your fellow runners, even if you choose to pursue it differently than they do.  

Good Coach-Athlete Relationships

One thread that many of the best runners have in common is that they have had a long term coach-athlete relationship with the same coach.  Meb Keflezighi has worked with the same coach, Bob Larson, for well over 15 years.  Deena Kastor worked with Coach Joe Vigil for well over a decade from her college graduation to her rise to road and marathon dominance.  Galen Rupp has worked with Alberto Salazar since his early high school days. 

Why is a good long term coach-athlete relationship so important?  When a good relationship is formed it produces great fruits because of the synergy of experience and knowledge that is created and that synergy increases exponentially over time.  The longer the coach and athlete work together the better they know each other and more in-depth they can understand how and what works best for the athlete in numerous scenarios and situations.  Reaching your potential in distance running is much longer than a few month endeavor and so it helps greatly to work under the same general philosophy (even while the details are fined tuned) for a long period of time.   The coach provides the expertise, experience and an impartial and often big picture prospective, while the athlete provide the in-action perspective and feedback from training and racing, as well as the dreams and goals to be achieved.  This is not a synergy that can be maximized in a short period, but one that needs to grow and blossom over time.  As Meb, Deena and Galen (all Olympic medalists) have found out, that long term relationship can help them achieve new heights and realize dreams. 

Notes/Observations About Good Coach-Athlete Relationships

• Whenever an athlete is pushing their limits physically to improve, there will be minor set-backs and injuries along the way, this is an inevitable truth of sport.  A good coach-athlete relationship should help minimize those occasions but cannot eliminate them all together.  An athlete or coach should not jump ship on the relationship because a set-back happens but rather communicate and work with the other to determine why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.  This requires open and honest communications and analysis from both parties.  Often what is learned will produce greater results in the future, a benefit potentially lost if either party abandons the relationship, taking their perspective with them. 

• Flexibility – Both the coach and athlete have to have a healthy level of flexibility in order for a good coach-athlete relationship to work long term.  While there needs to be an over-all philosophy and structure (such as what I outlined in my last blog post) that both parties buy into and believe in, there has to be flexibility in figuring out how that philosophy will best be implemented for that athlete.  This is something that can change slightly and will be fined tuned through-out their time working together.  Coaches who have a “my way or the high-way” mentality and athletes who have an “I’m moving on at the first sign of a problem” attitude never put themselves in a position to reap the benefits of a good long term coach-athlete relationship. 

• Partners Not Adversaries.  Both the athlete and the coach need to view each other as a valuable and trusted partner in the relationship.  They are working together as a team to get the athlete to their goals.  This type of beneficial relationship requires good communication, openness, honesty and respect from both parties.  Athletes need to be careful not to surround themselves or give undue influence to people (often athletes who have had bad coach athlete relationships in the past) who view coaches as people to blame when problems arise or who encourage them to defy or hide things from their coach.  Coaches need to facilitate communications and remain as flexible as possible in order to help the athlete adapt to often less than ideal real world situations and scenarios.  Coaches need to be sensitive to the athlete’s personal situations and realize they are often dealing with many conflicting priorities in their life.  Athletes need to realize that the coach is there to help them reach their stated  goals, and are simply reminding and advising them what they think (from experience) it will take to realize those goals.  The better they communicate the better partners they can be in fine tuning the program, and greater their chance of success. 

• Thoughtful.  Neither the athlete or the coach should enter a coach-athlete relationship lightly.  The athlete needs to research the coach and understand their philosophy and ask questions first.  The coach needs to talk with the athlete and understand them and their running goals and personal situation. Each needs to make sure that other is someone that they can work well with so that the potential is there for a longer term relationship.   

I have been lucky to have a few great longer term coach-athlete relationships, and I can say it is very rewarding to both parties.  I love to see the athlete develop and learn more about themselves and feel honored to be a trusted partner in that process.  I have also been a part of several potentially very good coach-athletes relationships that where regrettably cut short due (in part) to some of the reasons talked about above.  As much as the former is rewarding the later can be heart breaking for both parties as well.  But the rewards of 2 people, each passionate about the endeavor, working together to accomplish great things, always trumps the potential heart breaks and that is why I (and many others) continue to coach.  

MPR's: Training For Distance Running

I have been a student of the sport of distance running for as long as I can remember.  As a kid back in the 1970's I remember reading and re-reading Jim Fixx's "Complete Booking of Running" and checking and reading out every book remotely related to running from the Henderson Country Public Library.  I learned the dewy decimal system specifically just so that I could find all the books on running in the library's reference card catalogs. This continued on through high school and then college and decade after decade until the present day.  It is a subject that has fascinated me: how do we prepare and train in order to get faster at distance running.  It is so simple, yet so complex, it is like an onion with so many layers, yet such a simple straight forward favor to be savored.  

I have learned a great deal about the sport from decades of personal experience and the experiences of running friends and the athletes I have coached, but also from other coaches, and researchers who have been willing to generously share their findings and philosophies.  I have read their works, I have attended their presentations and debated with them various topics in the sport.  It has expanded my thinking, and even when I don't agree with someones philosophy I never fail to learn something by hearing them out and looking at things from a different perspective.   

I believe it is this open sharing by athletes, coaches and researchers that is what keeps this sport moving forward.  With this in mind, I have prepared a 30 slide overview of my training philosophy that I want to share and make available here in this blog and on my website.  My hope is that at the very least it sparks ideas and new line of thinking in your mind, and at the very best it offers you a solid, tried and true training philosophy to embrace to help you advance in the sport.

Coach Mark Hadley's - Training For Distance Running

While it wasn't possible to cover every aspect of training in full detail (maybe that will be available in a book one day), this presentation gives you a good overview of how I think of and approach training based on my decades involved in the sport and from all the people (coaches, athletes and advisers) I have learned from along the way.    

Happy Running,

Coach Mark Hadley 

Finding The Mental Strategy That Is Right For You

The ultimate goal of a runner in training is to improve their running fitness so they can meet their goals.

The ultimate goal of a runner in a race is to be able to produce their best possible performance in the race.

There are both physical and mental components of training and racing that go into accomplishing these goals.  There are thousands of books and articles that talk about the physical aspects of training and racing.  These books and articles explore the workouts to use to best improve fitness in training and what physical strategies yield the best race performances. I talk extensively about those physical aspects here in this blog and on my website EliteMarathoning.com. But what I want to focus on here today is the mental aspects that are often overlooked and under discussed.  

Mental Components

The mental side of producing your best possible training or racing performance is the area where the greatest variability is.  Runners are a diverse group and have all sorts of different personalities, have all sorts of different and varied life experiences and as a results often have extremely varied tendencies, strengths and weaknesses and stress and comfort triggers.  Because of this no matter how carefully crafted, no one mental strategy will work well for everyone.  So rather than spending our time trying to force square pegs into round holes, our time is best spent developing a hole that fits our own personal mental pegs the best.

So how do we go about doing this?  I think this requires personal honesty, introspection, and experimentation. 

Personal honesty:  I think the first thing we must realize is there is no right or wrong answers here.  We need to free ourselves from embarrassment in our weaknesses or pride in strengths, at least enough in order to be honest about them and recognize them for the role they play in our running.  We must do away with our defensive shields and illusions and be open and honest about what is happening in our own minds.  This will allow us to move forward.

Introspection:  once we have allowed ourselves to be honest about what is happening in our minds, we need to take note of the things that are stress triggers for us, what our comfort triggers are, and what are the underlying sources of our own personal motivation.  Warning: this can be hard to do so take your time and be honest and think of multiple examples of each to confirm the tendencies.  These each will be unique to us personally.  It is very easy to fall in to answering what we think we are supposed feel.  We need to make sure that we come up with what is true for us personally and not how we wish we where or how we think some great athlete is supposed to be.  Note:  a stress trigger for you may be someone else’s comfort trigger so there is not much use in comparing yourself with others. 

Experimentation:  Once we have been honest with ourselves and sought to understand better what is happening in our minds, then it’s time to use that and figure out a mental strategy to use our strengths, motivations and comfort triggers while staying away from our weaknesses and stress triggers.   Then try these strategies out in training (tempo runs can be a great place for working on this) and in races and fine tune them as you go to find which produce the best results both in terms of our performances and also our enjoyment of the performances.  The possibilities can be almost unlimited, so don’t be afraid to think outside the box.  Personalize it and make it uniquely you.  Once we have done this and determined what works best for us, our running will be better aligned to us personally and as a result our training will and racing will be more enjoyable, and fruitful, and consistent. 

Examples

I almost hate to give examples because I don’t want to bias or limit the scope of our thinking, but at the same time I do think it can be good to help us realize the type of things I am talking about and how much individuals can vary in mental approach and still be very successful.  So let me talk briefly about 2 of the bigger example areas:

Motivation:  some people are externally competitive people, they enjoy racing others and beating rivals and going after records, and that competition is very motivating to them.  For other that external motivation is not as present and instead they are more motivated by a quest for personal betterment or some other aspect that running provides (such as helping others through running).  Each runner is best off examining and understanding their own personal motivations and then using those in formulating their mental approach.  For many people motivation will be a combination of things but it is helpful to explore those and understand which are dominate and which are more passive and in what situations.  Ultimately in order to perform our best we must find what way keeps us more motivated than we are tired and focusing on something that is not as motivating for you just won’t get the job done.   I have worked with very successful runners on all ends of the spectrum here and there is no hard and fast rule as to what is the “best” motivation, it is only a matter of which is the one that personally motivates you the most. 

Measurement:  every runner has their preferred way to judge or manage progress in training or in a race.  For a great many it is time or pace, but for some it is heart rate, and for others perceived effort or something else. Many runners like to use one method primarily and then have another method as a safety check or back-up. Experiment and know yourself, which way works best for you and produces your best performances.  There is no right or wrong way, so don’t limit yourself on the possibilities.  I have had runners win major races and have no idea what their time would be until they see the clock at the finish line (they used HR and feel/rhythm as their measuring sticks), and others who target, know, record and nail every split along the way.  The most successful runners are the ones who figure out what works best for them personally in terms of measuring and judging their performance. 

Conclusion

As you can see now, because of our mental, personality and life experience differences, there never will be 1 right mental strategy for everyone.  The key will be come up with your own personal strategy, tailored just for you.  The more fully you embrace that journey of finding and crafting that, the better the results you will have.  Be honest, and be true to yourself and you will be successful in your running, and in life.  

Clearly Defining Stress Workouts and Easy/Recovery Runs

All physical training always comes down to the stress and recover principle so be sure you clearly define each component and remind yourself of what you are trying to accomplish.  Here is what the stress and recover principle tells us:

Stress & Recover Principle:  stress the the body in a certain physical discipline and then allow it to recover, and when it has recovered it will comeback better adapted to that original stress.

Running training then, is not about hitting a certain time, it is about getting the desired adaptation.  Here is what I think is a good definition to work from, and way to look at, both our stress workouts and easy/recovery runs:

Stress Workout: These are running workouts in which we significantly stress a system or systems of the body in order to produce a targeted adaptation so as to improve certain aspects of our running fitness. Our goal is to do sufficient and specific enough work in order to elicit the adaptation we are seeking, while still being able to recover from that work relatively quickly so we can soon after target another adaptation (as we have multiple systems to work regularly). To accomplish this we want to finish our stress workouts feeling like we have worked very hard, but not as far as having all-out raced our efforts. In order to keep the training process moving forward and to be able to target all necessary systems with adaptation on a regular basis, a stress workout should be able to be recovered from with 1-3 easy/recovery days.

Easy / Recovery Runs: These are runs we do in order to promote recovery and to maintain or advance our body’s adaptations to running and aerobic fitness while we recover from our stress workouts. These runs should be kept relatively short and slow enough that they do not significantly stress the body. 

Important Notes/Observations

- As a coach I can tell you approximately the pace ranges in which to do certain workouts at in order to target certain desired body systems for adaptation. But these are just educated assumptions based on many, many variables - it is not an exact pace and can vary based on changes to any number of variables.  The primary focus then of the stress workout is to get in significant and specific enough stress to gain the desired adaptation and not necessarily to hit a certain time or pace.  You should never judge the success or failure of a workout by if you hit a certain pace or covered a certain distance, but rather by if you put in the correct effort and executed the workout in such a way as to significantly stress the system(s) you wanted to target. 

- Be careful to keep in mind the need to sufficiently target a system(s) with significant enough of a stress to elicit the desired adaptation.  One common mistake I think many runners and coaches make is to utilize mixed workouts too much in which they target many different systems in the same stress workout.  The end result of this often there is not enough focus or specificity to the work on any 1 system to gain a new adaptation.  Instead I think mixed workouts are better for maintaining the fitness of (adaptations of) many systems rather than improving any of them. 

- As a general rule, we do not gain fitness by pushing and improving the pace of our easy/recover runs, but rather the pace of our easy runs improves as we gain fitness. 

Lessons on Motivations

One of the best lessons coaching has taught me is that each person has their own personal motivations and stress and comfort triggers.  What burns some people out, can actually be comforting and motivating to others.  What some find stressful, others find reassuring.  What motivates some doesn't necessarily work for others and vice-versa.  As a coach I have learned to not assume other's motivations are the same as what mine were as an athlete, and instead to help them find and understand, embrace and use their own motivations in the best and most useful ways possible.

A few great examples of this:  I have worked with some very successful athletes who get totally stressed out by paces and times and race their best when going watchless and running strictly by feel, and other equally as successful ones who take comfort in and work best with very well defined and regular pace/time targets.  Some need/desire a well defined race plan and some a more general race plan.  Some runners are planners and draw a great comfort in having training and racing laid out in advance to give them a sense of focus and knowing they have a set path to follow, while others are more free spirits and spontaneous and need greater flexibility and don't like having a schedule hanging over their heads. Some thrive on competition and beating their rivals, while others thrive on the personal betterment of their own PR's or performances.   I can name plenty of successful runners that fall on all sides of these issues and more.

The point of this I guess, is that as a runner or coach we need to recognize that we are all different mentally and that is OK. And it pains me to see runners or coaches criticize or assume another runner or coach is doing it wrong because they are doing something that doesn't mentally work for them. We need to stop judging other's motivations and instead realize that what is most important is what works best for that individual runner, and assuming that what works for you in terms of motivation and burn-out applies to them as well just might not be true.  Sure we will likely find many who have similar motivations and stress and comfort triggers to ourselves, but we will also find many who are different.  In those cases be encouraging and understanding, not judgmental, and appreciate all the amazing variations we have in our great sport.