4 Things I've Learned in 40 Years as a Runner
I joined my first track club at 11 years old. Forty-four years later, after running competitively through high school, being a decent varsity runner in university, and continuing into the masters running years, I still run six days a week and race eight or ten times per year.
I was not a top-level runner, but I won my share of races and had some performances I’m proud of, including 1:57 for 800m; 4:10 for 1500m in university and later in my 30s; 1:21:51 for the half marathon; 1:59:27 for 30km; and 3:00:10 for the marathon.
Here are a few key things I’ve learned.
1. Consistent training trumps a few big weeks.
Just about every runner with big goals has gone through a stage of dramatically increasing their training (usually at the beginning of the school cross-country season or perhaps in the early weeks of marathon prep). This invariably leads to feeling great at first, then hitting a wall and either getting injured or overtrained.
Some runners (me for one) repeat this cycle of overtraining followed by burnout, illness, or injury repeatedly. Eventually, I learned that backing off and finding a consistent, doable training plan led to longer-term, consistent progress. Took me a while though…
2. Increasing mileage is the surest way to improve … and the surest way to get injured.
Most of my periods of significant improvement came following periods of consistently increased mileage. The more you run, the better you run. Unfortunately, more mileage has also led to more injuries on many occasions.
So what’s a motivated and ambitious runner to do?
Listen to your body. You may have big goals in your head of hitting a certain mileage level, but if you feel increased soreness or undue fatigue, be prepared to back off and either take a few days of shorter runs or… gasp…a rest day. It won’t kill you, I promise.
And forget the so-called ‘10% rule’. It might be a rough guideline that someone once made up, but your body knows that. It will let you know if you’re overdoing things by increased soreness, fatigue, and general feelings of lethargy.
You might be able to increase by 20% or more early in a training cycle or when you’re coming back from a rest period. On the other hand, a 5% increase might be too much if you’re really challenging yourself with volume or doing a lot of speedwork. Ultimately, you have to adjust based on how you feel. You know your body best and you’ll have to figure out how to be your own coach on this one.
3. Interval training helps, but you don’t need as much as you might think.
When I was in high school, I ran three interval workouts most weeks. This led to rapid improvement, and also a rapid plateau in fitness. It also took a big toll in terms of energy levels and motivation.
Often I would run great races early in the season and then be mentally and physically exhausted by the time the important races came around later in the year.
As the season wore on, I’d start getting to the hard part of a race and instead of being motivated to push on and see how well I could do, I’d be thinking, “Oh God, not this again,” and mentally check out. For years I thought I was just not a mentally tough runner, but that wasn’t the case. I was just overtrained.
A funny thing happened when I started running fewer interval sessions. My finishing kick improved dramatically. Many runners feel like they need to work on speed all the time to have a great kick, but that isn’t the case.
Many times I’ve noticed that after a period of training for a longer race — such as a marathon or half marathon — and doing fewer and slower interval sessions, I’ll jump into a 5 or 10k race for fun and surprise myself with how much faster I can kick at the end despite not having run anything close to that pace in recent training.
This has happened enough times to know that it’s not a fluke. Your finishing kick has as much to do with how much you have left at the end of a race as your basic speed. While having a decent amount of basic speed certainly helps, hammering away at speedwork all the time isn’t necessary to have a great kick.
4. Simplicity is your friend.
Some coaches make running sound complicated. They pepper training discussions with all manner of scientific jargon and make it sound like it’s a difficult and tricky thing to train properly. Don’t fall for it. You’re not going to ruin your marathon preparation if you do a workout at 4.2 millimoles of lactate instead of 4.0 or do an easy run at 124 beats per minute instead of 130.
Over the years, I’ve trained with many different coaches and systems and they’ve all gotten me to roughly the same level of fitness. In the end, what matters is getting your butt out the door and running every day (or as often as possible).
Run easily most of the time, as much as you can without getting injured or sick of it, and do some race-specific training (intervals, tempos, hills, etc.) once or twice a week depending on your fitness and ability. This will get you to pretty much the best level you can.
Pro runners who are trying to shave that extra 0.01% off their times might benefit from a more personalized and detailed approach. Fair enough, but for the vast majority of us, building a big mileage base and then adding a judicious amount of speedwork is all the detail we need to get good results and years of enjoyment from the sport.