Your Handbrake On Success...

Like runners, success comes in many guises, shapes, and speed.

Many put down their success in running/endurance/athletics to performance – podium, result or improvement. Yet, many don’t start running/triathlon with the ambition to win, or place, or improve times. Their goals are often about health and fitness, and can be deeply personal. Their reasons to continue to run often differ. Ultimately, all runners – with consistent effort and regular running – improve. 

Improvement comes in many guises too:  in how easy a run or a hill or a given pace feels; how often a runner gets out the door;  how much easier it is to talk when running; learning stuff about their body, running & fitness; buying new workout, active-wear or training clothing and shoes with passion and pride; feeling more confident; losing weight; feeling better; recovering quicker, being less tired and less sore. All are qualitative markers of improving as a runner. 
And are distinctly yours too. 

The quantitative markers – going further, and going faster – are easier to measure. Yet, they are not for everyone, and soon fade as improvement is not linear, nor ongoing and forever. 
The strategies that worked for your first year or two will not work as effectively as you accumulate your running miles, experience and time. And, there will aways be someone faster and sleeker, with brighter and newer gear, who can run further easier.

Many consider "physical fitness” the most important aspect of improving. “Fitness” is an important part of performance. Ongoing performance improvement is as much about "mental fitness” and preparation as it is about the physical.

Many create (mental) barriers, challenges and road-blocks for themselves and train and run (and race) with the hand-brake on. 

You see it in their habits - movement, training, lifestyle and recovery habits; their body-language; you hear it in their self-talk, their out–talk, their words, their message; you sense it in their company, and around others. They often look back on what hey could’ve, should’ve or would’ve, yet didn’t. 

They can obsess about “can’t”, when they really mean “won’t”, “didn’t” when they mean “wouldn’t".

They continue to do what they've always done, yet wonder why they don't improve.
A strength becomes a weakness.

They've become their own greatest barrier to success.

Ask yourself: “how do I think and talk about myself as a runner/triathlete/athlete?”, “how do I think and talk about training and racing?”, “do I think and talk about problems, barriers, weakness and the past, or do I think, talk and act about them as opportunities and paths to improve?”, “am I a I can’t’ or ‘I won’t’ or ‘I haven’t, but will’ thinker?”

Are my thoughts and words destructive or constructive, reflexive or reflective, reactive or proactive?

Do I do (train, race, recover) and say and think the same things, yet expect different results?

Your actions  - your habits of movement, your habits of mind, and your habits of, at and about training – will determine what (if anything) you do about those answers, and your future success.

Go. Think better. Talk better.

Take the handbrake off.

Run better.

Succeed.

Trap 8: Terrible Toos - Recovery

To get better you need to train. Fundamentally you need to train regularly and consistently. 

Your ‘Smart Training’ (see Trap 2) plan will you have training hard and performing hard training sessions. To take advantage of your hard training, you need be able to recover, and allow your body to adapt - make more-or-less permanent changes in structure or function – to perform best when you ask it to. Poor performance, performance plateaus, loss of motivation, ill-health and injury result when this balance is askew for too long. Recovery – whether passive, active, or involving your easier sessions is vital.

·      Too little taper before key races, and long races.

Get out: rest up. All your hard work should be done before the last 1-3 weeks of your race. Take confidence in this.

Prevention: tapers come in different shapes and sizes. Try different ones, yet keep the taper basics: Progressively reduce your volume; keep some (race-pace) intensity; emphasise ‘easy’; keep your training frequency until the last few days; sleep, eat and drink well; try nothing new; use methods to promote recovery

·      Too little physical and mental recovery after key races or the race-season

Get out: take a well earned physical, mental and emotional break, particularly after key/priority and long (15km/10mile and beyond) races. Revisit family and friends

Prevention: schedule post-race down-times in your plan. Do not rush back into formal nor structured training, particularly after a bad or break-out race.

·      Too much recovery after key races or the race-season: On the other hand too much time off can make it a long tough journey back, especially through Winter.  Don’t let tendons, base-fitness and weight or body-fat ‘deteriorate’ too much while recovering.

Get out: have a scheduled date and activity to start being active again. Find a partner or friend to help. A walk or casual basketball, squash, gym or mountain bike session will help fill the hollowness and tip the inertia in your favour

Prevention: learn from your past, and from others. Formal or hard training doesn’t need to be your entry back, so plan for this. Listen to your body and mind, and progressively build your way back.

Is too much or too little recovery a trap for you?

Trap 7: Terrible Toos 1 - speed

As endurance athletes, we runners are meant to endure: endure effort, time, fatigue and the elements. Sure, various continuous, fartlek, interval and repetition based training sessions help us improve performance (and feel better), and in various ways for different length races or events. 

Running faster in and for training helps to improve. Yet, tipping the balance towards 'too fast', 'too much too fast' and 'too fast to soon' sets the scales toward the risks out-weighting the benefits: establishing bad training, motivational and technique habits, plateauing, an early peak, race-season frustration, poor results and injury.


The main challenge comes in the freedom that running faster often provides. It also makes us feel good. The early metabolic changes that allow us to run-faster (say, during intervals) from week-to-week outpace the adaptations our muscles, tendons and bones need to make for us to be able to cope with the increase load, stress and shock of running faster. It's not our metabolic machinery that often breaks down, it's the musculoskeletal support and movement systems.

How much, how fast, how often is very much an individual thing. If you're not certain, err on the side of caution.

Be wary the Speed Traps:

·      Too many hard days, with too few easy days and ‘unloading’ weeks.

Get out: Don’t confuse high volume ‘moderate’ training with true hard sessions. 
Prevention: Done properly - specific to your capacities, plan and races – you’ll need the easy days to recover, and lighter unloading weeks to adapt. Work your plan.

·      Too little general preparation or base training per macrocycle.

Get out: hold your nerve – patience, persistence and passion is power.

Prevention: A large proportion of your training time should be spent doing lower intensity training particularly through your general preparation (base and build) phases, even during the race season, and certainly when  recovering from races, ill-health or injury.

·      Too fast too soon during general preparation or base phase, and too much race-specific training too soon - particularly for novice, intermediate and those returning to running after a long lay-off.

Get out: Ensure you establish your base or foundation.

Prevention: Give your body time to adapt before increasing the volume of your more intense work.  There’s no need to rush. Learn from the previous macrocylce/year. Revise your log/diary/journal, and revisit your plan

·      Too much fast (intense) training, and too fast during easy sessions.

Get out: easy sessions are meant to be that, easy. Have the courage to execute them. If your hard/fast sessions are truly that you'll need the easy sessions.

Prevention: Patience and consistent regular training are keys to your ultimate success. Revisit your plan.

·      Executing (work) intervals and sets too fast and too short, and having too much rest between them.

Get out: There’s little to be gained from going much faster than your current 5km (run) time-trial or race speeds - particularly through your preparation phases as they approximate your VO2max, a level you’ll rarely perform above. 

Prevention: In a cyclic manner, aim to build the volume of these intensities from 2 to 8% of your total volume, with 1:1 to 1:0.25 work-rest intervals for, say, 3-5minutes and 30sec-2mins intervals respectively. Of course, these are dependent upon your capacity, experience, future race distance/s and strength & weaknesses. Leg speed ‘sets’ (eg. strides, accelerations) and ‘drills’ for neuromuscular efficiency can be used smartly all-year.

·      Training faster than one’s current level of fitness, in “hope” of some distant grandeur goal.

Get out: Don’t get ahead of yourself. Work in the here and now, with an eye to building to your future

Prevention: Revisit your previous race/year reviews and your plan. Use current and relevant metrics or results. Use current levels of fitness (eg. time-trial or ‘key session’ results) to build your fitness and performance (base).

Run Training Traps - 1

We all got into running for one reason or another – some of you recently, a few of us many years ago. You enjoy the active and running lifestyle for your own reasons: health, fitness, wellbeing, state-of-mind, participation, performance, perfection or podium and, in some sense, pride.

Some things have changed; some things haven’t. Your training comes to reflect the reasons why you run. The basics haven’t changed: you still need to run to get running’s benefits: swim, cycle and gym are good, but not as good.

You want training to be what you want it to be, and effective. Yet, amongst the technology, self-professed gurus, and Coach-google, basic training errors are still made: many out of running’s present culture, some out of habit and ego. Are you trapped by these?

Remember, what works for the pros and what are promoted as “the best”, “the most effective”, “the ideal”, “the latest” or “short-cuts ” are rarely what they are made out to be. They simply don’t work for most. Perhaps these are your trap?

Through 2010-14 I have held discussions, meetings, race and program reviews, and constructed strategic performance plans with over 700 runners and coaches (and 350+ triathletes). Here are the Top Ten Run-training Traps as a summary. There’s also a cure or ‘get-out’, and a long-term prevention strategy for each.

Trap 1: Training habits: Many do what or how they were training when they started. You’ll improve for your first few years regardless of what you do, so you keep doing it.  Some habits are positive, some aren’t. As your body and experience change, so must your training.

 Get out: read, ask, listen, learn and, importantly, educate yourself about yourself and how you respond to different types of sessions, and how your body adapts to accumulated sessions (training)

Prevention: keep a log and journal. Use these, with race and test results to review, revise and re-work your training, races, and macrocycle or year. Plan to do differently next race (or season). Then act.

How have you been  'trapped' by your training?

What did you do to get out?