To achieve great things, we need to be patient and take a long-term approach to training to grow, adapt and improve incrementally season after season. A coach is a trusted partner in your quest to become better. I work with runners from the back middle and front of the pack my only criteria is determination if you are goal orientated and determined to reach your goals I’m here to help no matter what your pace.
The fundamental requirement for any endurance sport is the ability to sustain a submaximal work rate for a prolonged period.
Endurance development is all-relative, and we are trying to extend the quality of performance. Its an intricate process that requires a mix of physiological, biomechanical, emotional, mental, and neural adaptations
The ability to compete strongly in endurance events is influenced by our physical fitness and psychological strengths.
Endurance training involves developing both general and event specific endurance and the mental toughness or the grit needed to achieve our peak performance.
Endurance athletes need the ability to resist the sensation of fatigue that cries out to slow down or stop during endurance events or challenging training sessions.
We develop mental toughness over time, through exposure to fatigue during training sessions. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is true with endurance sport but the truth is we need to become comfortable at the intensity or fatigue level, encountered during competitions
The psychology and physiology of endurance are inextricably linked. The brain and body are fundamentally intertwined. We have a total kind of synergy between psychological and physiological and physical characteristics that go into defining your limits.
Any endurance task requires decisions, whether they are conscious or unconscious decisions, on how hard to push and when. Changing your internal monologue does have an effect on your performance. The brains interpretation of the body’s signals is maybe more important than the body’s signals themselves when pushing our limits. Panting and aching legs aren’t as bad as they might seem.
Fundamentally, your brain is just trying to protect you. You need your brain to be smart and anticipate that the feelings of discomfort, warnings and perceptions. Is this harder than I am willing to work? We judge what is sustainable based on how we feel and how that feeling compares to how we expect to feel at that point in a race.
Our brain essentially tells us whether we should make the decision to slow down and give in to the fatigue, or to try just a little harder to keep going based on our prior experiences
We have a choice to learn just how far we can be pushed, how much we can endure and how much we can handle. We can all strive to be better than we were yesterday, and we can put our hearts into something to see what we become, despite the fear of failure.
Adaptation and development occurs when we are pushing our boundaries. Being uncomfortable signals that we are in a place to grow.
We always have stuff in reserve. Our body is too well controlled to let us push so deep that we risk injury.
Michelle Greaney (Level 2 National Athletics Ireland Endurance Coach)
Recovery is one of the most important components to any training plan for longevity in the sport. Take it seriously, it’s an integral part of the marathon process!
The marathon compromises your immune system and also many other important regulatory systems of your body. It causes significant muscle cell damage and skeletal strain. Cellular damage to tissues can last for up to 7-10 days post race measured by certain chemicals in the blood called creatinine kinase and myoglobin. These tissues repair themselves but time is the key ingredient to letting this repair process happen properly.
Don’t be a hero trying to get back to training too soon and think, ‘sure I feel grand’, it doesn’t work like that. There is plenty of time to set focus on the shorter stuff again.
Unfortunately too many ignore this and fail to allow for sufficient recovery from the physical and mental stress they have just gone through.
It is very important to give the mind a break from the constant focus on the intense training program and from the overall stress.
It causes significant muscle cell damage and skeletal strain. Cellular damage to tissues can last for up to 7-10 days post race measured by certain chemicals in the blood called creatinine kinase and myoglobin. These tissues repair themselves but time is the key ingredient to letting this repair process happen properly.
The recovery process is very individual, there is no one size fits all!
The specifics of what, when, how long to recover for depend on the need of the individual runner. How long until the next race etc depends on the training history and experience of the runner and what’s next on the agenda. There are a host of variables that can affect your recovery, such as the intensity of the race, your health, and the training season.
Our bodies are exceptionally robust and adaptable but respecting that they sometimes need a bit longer than we may want to or have been used to previously to fully recover is important especially if you were completed depleted.
It is trial and error to see what works for you and what doesn’t work for you being the determinants of how your recovery strategy will look.
Returning to run: for now, enjoy a period of low impact activity, maybe a few post race walks to
get the body moving again.
After a week, most people are returning to easy running. A return to running too hard and too soon by runners fearing losing fitness or craving a run can result in injury further down the line and affect subsequent races.
2-4 weeks will see most runners back running consistently and progressing to full training as needed.
🔸️Eat well and maintain a sufficient protein to carbohydrate ratio and rehydrate as appropriate. This has a huge impact on your recovery and return to running. Following the marathon, your muscles are full of tiny microtears and these need to be repaired before your muscles can function at max capacity. To accelerate this repair, we need to keep protein synthesis elevated in the muscles. The well earned post race and extensive training routine celebration drinks wont have dramatically affected our recovery.
Sleep is absolutely vital and perhaps the most underated recovery enhancer. You cannot foam roll or supplement your way out of poor sleeping habits.
🔸️See your physio and physical therapist if you have carried an injury or niggle beyond the usual aches and pains throughout your training journey and feels it needs investigating. If you have been patched up just to get you through the marathon, it’s time to get it fixed now.
🔸️ Enjoy a sports massage a couple of days post marathon.
Take your rest days and learn to read your body. It is hard to argue with any of above recomendations but the tricky part is actually sticking with them. If you don’t, don’t expect cryosaunas and CBD oil to make up for it.
Tapering is another training procedure, a progressive non-linear reduction of a training load during a variable amount of time that is intended to reduce physiological stress of daily training and optimize the adaptations we have achieved throughout the months of intensive training.
Tapering is highly individualistic to adaptations, fitness maintenance and supercompensations but you still need to follow the general phsiological principles to achieve an optimal race performance at a major event.
Maximal gains are achieved using a 40-60% reduction of volume you were doing in the pretaper mesocycle.
10-14 days represents the borderline between dissipation of some of the accumulated fatigue disappearance and the negative influence of detaining leading to staleness.
Ideally, you want to reach the peak of your marathon fitness and the lowest level of your accumulated fatigue at exactly the same time.
With every marathon you train for, you learn more along the way about how the body responds to it so you can make the necessary adjustments.
Don’t confuse tapering with resting or time for just easy running
A reduction in running volume is key but intensity and frequency of runs should not change excessively or you risk interrupting the rhythm of training too much and the cycle that your body is used to.
Dont detrain and lose some of the adaptations made.
Training volume can be markedly reduced without negatively impacting your performance. High intensity training can maintain or even enhance training induced adaptations. During taper, a lot of training paces should mimic race day.
✔Prioritize sleep and nutrition
✔Optimize muscle tension, spring in legs during race day
A powerful equation that is equally applicable to all areas of your life.
The key to injury prevention is a sensible training structure with a planned gradual progression.
It is important to find the balance with this equation. One of the common mistakes seen in highly motivated runners is they push themselves too hard too often in training and end up over reaching.
The 2 most common risks for injury are
1) Load
2) Previous injury
As runners, we are inherently impatient, It’s a fine balancing act. The structures in our musculoskeletal system, especially tendons and bones, are very sensitive to load. Both structures require controlled and gradual exposure to load to strengthen and adapt, but too much of it and too much over a short period will often lead to overload and inevitable injury. Our musculoskeletal system like varying loads. Not dramatic, sudden changes in load, but varying loads.
Dont rush the process of development and expect results too quickly or you will end up disappointed over and over again. Progress in running involves accepting where you are, training within your capabilities at present, not where you think you could be, not where you want to be, not where you used to be but where you are right now!
~~Let it come-don’t force it~~
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The key is to find a fairly stable balance between stress and recovery that will allow you to achieve max adaptation, running at the correct intensities (ie easy is easy, mod is mod, threshold should be at threshold etc. The temptation for many is to push the pace too often when they are feeling good turning easy runs into moderate runs, mod to threshold runs become all out workouts and intervals become all out races. We need to become more disciplined to hold required intensities so that we can sustain training in the long term and not have to take unplanned time off. Its ultimately about adapting to the work you are putting in. We need to allow our physical and mental battery to recharge.
Be careful about how frequently and how hard we push ourselves. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking if you don’t maximally fatigue yourself in every workout that you won’t have done enough to stimulate improvement.
If you are pushing yourself into reserves too often and going to the bottom of the well, it is highly unlikely that you are going to be able to absorb the training that you are doing in the first place- going to the bottom of the well should only be done very sparingly. Its also unlikely that you will be able to sustain decent quality workouts consistently over a period of months and this sort of consistency is one of the key ingredients to successful training.
Always keep sustainability in mind, playing the long game in terms of intensity and volume in your training- training hard but at a level that is appropriate in order to maintain consistency and mometum. Know when to back off during training in bigger workouts in order to sustain what you are doing.
Keep something in the tank at the end of the majority of your workouts. Don’t force the session, err on the conservative side of your pace ranges- feel your run rather than being held ransom to data all of the time. There are too many variables that can affect a given intensity on a given day!
By doing this, you are not adding additional risk of injury or prolonged fatigue. So either running at a slightly lower intensity than what you could sustain for the vol of the workout or finishing the session knowing you could add nearly 20% more volume at the same intensity. When you do this, you are achieving most or all of the benefits that the session can offer and your form won’t suffer as a consequence of straining!!
So, the aim is not to push yourself to the max, rather work on areas of performance such as lactate threshold, aerobic capacity etc. If you are running in a fatigued state very often(unrecovered, maybe stressed) you are likely to increase tissue load as you are exceeding what your body can cope with. I see this with a lot of runners following short aggressive plans that will only get them short term gains..
Its a case of working within your limits and not pushing your training beyond what your body can cope with. What you accumulate week after week, month after month has a much greater impact towards your performance than 2 or 3 heroic efforts in workouts.
Tissue load is dependent on training
*volume
*intensity
*frequency
*type.
If we are looking at mileage only for monitoring training load, we are underestimating the total training stress.
Training load is the product of external(mechanical-distance and duration) and internal (physiological and psychological-RPE, HR, blood lactate) loads. So duration and distance but also the response to the duration and distance!
Frequency is another factor that we need to monitor as load, knowing the deeper details on someone’s training is important.
Another hugely important aspect in training to monitor is recovery strategy. If the proper recovery isn’t in place, then you will not adapt to the training load.
We need to allow sufficient time between really tough workout days.
Without ample recovery, we are more likely to see fatigue creep in, impairments in performance and potentially the development of injury. Have your recovery days/week planned as part of your training also. Move things around to get the most out of your training.
Rest and recovery is what makes you stronger and faster.
Also, why not get used to the RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion)scale, the 10 point scale, what the levels of the scale feel like, you will then get better more accurate results and continue to use it as part of your training load assessment. RPE tends to be quite responsive- if we are feeling run down, fatigued, stressed, that perception of exertion can increase so it can give you an indication that more recovery is needed.
Subjective wellbeing and perception of effort are the best ways to monitor training loads and identifying over- training and if you are headed for burnout.
Nothing beats listening to your own body, your own thoughts, intelligence-gut instinct rather than using all of these gadgets and piling up on too much data unnecessarily.
Using measures of perceived exertion can sometimes provide more benefit over hr monitoring.
Dont over complicate things. Just enjoy the process of running. To truly connect with your running, disconnect with all of this data surrounding you. Reflect during your run time, switch off from the world and take ownership of your run.
Progression runs feature quite a bit in my plans and are great for building stamina, mental strength, and teaching the body to run increasingly faster at the end of a race.
When you should utilise progression runs in different ways at various points of your macrocycle of training is important to know. It is not enough to just blindly do a run session.
To race fast, you need to train fast, but a progression run will bring on much less fatigue than a sustained long run at race pace or a tough track workout, and therefore it will require less recovery.
We are working on pacing with Darren because it has been a weakness in the past by going out too hard sometimes and I am happy to report there are big improvements.
3 main benefits: ~~~~
✅Mental strength, what feels better during a race than closing hard. Practicing race skill of getting faster and tougher throughout your effort.
✅Appropriate association of effort, stick to goals and when u start figuring it out, you will get a better understanding of the effort associated with different paces, running to feel.
✅Resistance to fatigue, closing hard isn’t just a mental skill, its physiological one also. Longer races like marathons are a battle against fatigue, the more we train our bodies to push that fatigue arising, the more successful we can be in accomplishing our goals.
These runs can be continuous, or broken
Darren’s was a continuous run with a cut down each km from easy pace to critical velocity.
Prescribing a range of paces eg 15 sec per km allows for some individual freedom and reaction to your perception of effort in the workout. Adjust it to how you feel as the miles progress and ultimately get a more successful workout.
They a great tool to add to your long run arsenal, feeling of running hard at the end of a long race.
Some examples⬇️
3-4k easy, 20/20/20, steady/MP/HM, creates a great stimulus.
8 min to 1min cut-down 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with 2′ easy rec jog in between, as length shortens, pace increases, start at MP, close at 5k effort.
Make the total volume of running appropriate for the stimulus you ar
3/2/1km (half, 10 mile, 8k effort) with 600m rec in between
Be aware that there are times for effort and times for trying to strike race pace e.g when weather isn’t conducive to running your typical pace.
Progress by feel in a recovery run. A slight progression during the second half of a recovery run can actually speed recovery by helping to flush lactic acid out of your legs from a previous days hard workout and give your body a better chance to absorb that hard workout and add a little more zip into what might normally be a slow, lethargic run.
Give it a go, Variability in training is always good 🏃♂️
“Comparison is TheThief of Joy” ~Theodore Rosevelt
Pretty much being a runner these days results in comparison due to apps like garmin connect, strava, suunto.
When you focus too much on what everyone else is doing however and how they are progressing, you only see how far you have to go instead of seeing how far you have come already.
Not only does comparison leave us with self-doubt and lack of confidence, but it also prevents us from being present in the moment and enjoying the process. Being completely engrossed in the now is hugely important when it comes to running guys.
FOCUS ON YOUR OWN GOALS
You need to celebrate and enjoy your own small successes each week instead of just being focused on the end results and wanting instant gratification because these little successes will build up to big results in the long run.
Once your heart is in your own training that’s all that matters.
Write down and plan your goals that feel true to you, not someone else!
Be sure to train within yourself, stop looking for instant results.
Yes, you can be certainly be inspired by others but don’t compare yourself to them too much as this may leave you feeling self doubt, lack confidence and completely deflated.
We all have our own reasons for running, our own motivation so find out what works and what doesn’t work for you.
Believe in your abilities, track your progress, cherish the journey❤
EVERY ATHLETE IS DIFFERENT!
Variables include running experience, training history, relative speed, strength and endurance, injury patterns, recoverability and therefore no two runners should train in precisely the same way.
Any degree of uncertainty can block your path and there will be obstacles along the way but this is how you will learn how bad you want it and how you will grow as an athlete.
Stay focussed, stay committed to your goals, its you vs you
So comparison is the thief of joy, but competition is the harbinger of character- especially when you focus on simply competing with yourself.
Not only do runners need to have an endurance base to build of but they also need a speed foundation.
Sprint training for distance runners is essential to serve as general speed but unfortunatelyit is underutilized. When done correctly, injury risk is low.
They are effective and essential for all runners who wish to improve and to be competitive.
Distance runners should use hills in their training to gain the many benefits available to them.
Hill sprints tests your neuromuscular system.
To train fast twitch fibres effectively, we need to provide a stimulus which activates them and quickly overloads them.
Short 10-12 sec max intensity effort against gravity with a full recovery (2′)will achieve this👌
Hill training when done correctly is a safe and effective way to improve your performance and develop power and muscle elasticity
✔Works on mechanics and pure sprint speed
✔Develops coordination
✔Develops control and stabilization
✔Nervous System Adaptations
✔Developing a variety of training alternatives is also important to prevent overuse injuries and maintain motivation
Nice adaptations with muscle stiffness and reactivity.
Not only do hills provide runners with stronger, faster muscles, but they spend less time on the ground(decreased ground contact time).
A primary goal of any training is to utilize as many muscle fibres as possible so that adaptations can occur to make them more efficient.
Training on hills increases the amount of muscle fibres being used and in the number of different muscles that would otherwise not be used, always important if you want to increase performance as it increases muscle fibre pool which the runner can access.
Running hills can teach form in a way that can’t be taught on the flat as the body is in some ways forced into being more efficient.
Running is essentially a series of single spring like hops. A certain amount of force needs to be applied to the ground to propel the athlete forward. The most specific form of plyometric training for runners is essentially sprinting.
Steep hill sprints/blasts can be used as a method of power development to start with and then progress slowly to flat sprints on the track. The emphasis shifts slowly from power development to a more plyometric type effect and more specific running form. Starting with just a few blasts (running in the best technical model) e.g 2-4 with a full recovery of 2-3′ and increasing the volume very progressively up to 10-12.
It is very important that you don’t decrease your recovery time as you lose the intensity and effectiveness of your sprint and use a different energy system. We dont want to accumulate lactate here!
The athlete should focus on a running technique which has vigorous arm drive and high knee lift, with the hips kept high, so that they are ‘running tall’, not leaning forward.
Pure speed work provides the foundation on which to build upwards towards race specificity.
Poceed with caution until you get over the hump of those early adaptations.
We can’t rush the process of athletic development. It takes time and patience. It takes many years of consistency and patience in training to gain any insight into your running potential.
Don’t increase too much at once (volume,intensity, frequency) A guide is close to 10% rule but this is dependent of course on your goals, your time frame that you have, your individual ability.
Consistency is key and building gradually, only change one thing at a time. This is key to success in your running. Endurance training can be monotonous at times and you don’t always see quick results but patience in the process delivers time and time again.
2. Too Much High Intensity
We need to have a firm understanding of the basics and do them well. There is a belief that in order to get good results we must push ourselves in every single session. This however, leads to burnout and injury.
We get the benefits from our training doing low intensity runs, this allows us to keep training without picking up an injury. Also some athletes are much more resilient than others and will tolerate fluctuations in training. It is better to get to a start line slight undercooked than overcooked. It is important that we learn to listen to our bodies. Core weekly planning. We need to think about how one session interacts with another and how one session influences the next one. Plan for recovery running.
Think long term, training is cumulative, you must earn the right to progress.
Don’t force training- don’t go there until you need to go there. The body doesn’t adapt to your schedule, it grows and adapts at a rate it decides to. We grow according to our current fitness and not where we desire to be.
Don’t demand more than what your body can deliver.
Training volume and consistency is the cake, intensity is the icing on the cake, making a cake is all about getting the order and proportions right ~Stephen Seiler
Training volume and consistency is the cake, intensity is the icing on the cake, making a cake is all about getting or the order and proportions right.
~Stephen Seiler
Workouts are not predictive, they are developmental-we are trying to change and evolve by manipulating workouts to keep getting better
3. Not Individualising Training
As runners, we tend to compare ourselves to others, we tend to look at people who train much harder and more frequently but we don’t think about what we are capable of, our training needs to be based on us and our capabilities for the level we are at at the moment, our previous injury history, external stressors etc. We can’t expect to train like an elite athlete when we actually have a very different lifestyle.
Don’t train like your friend, it’s all about your goals and what training is right for you to achieve those goals at a level that works for you. What if you choose a plan that pushes you too hard too soon based on your current levels, you are just increasing your injury risk. It is so important that you choose the training regime that is right for you! The training load needs to be progressed appropriately and effectively for you to adapt! Be prepared also to bend a little in your plan if needed. Remember we train the individual not the system. The system should be fit around the individual. Any solid training system will eventually become the perfect training system for you if it is continually customized and refined for you
4. Rapid return to running after a break
This will be common now that people haven’t been able to get out training during quarantine. Don’t rush back doing what you were doing before the break if you did take a break or step it right back in volume and intensity. When your body isn’t used to it, you will overload the tissues and a setback will ensue, time off is important but ease back into it when you return to training.
5. Inadequate Recovery
Running is tricky as it is all about restraint. There is a fine line between preparing yourself adequately for a race or overtraining
This often happens when recovery gets sacrificed and neglected. Recovery is one of the most important components to any training plan for longevity in the sport.
We need to adopt this process of thinking–Train hard-recover harder.
We should be putting as much effort and planning into our recovery as we do into our training. Think about this in your training week, where can you put it in to your training plan to allow you to recover from those tougher sessions, also, think about a recovery week every 3 to 4 weeks- we can plan to build over 3 weeks for example maintain some sharpness in the 4th week but reduce the volume by 10-30%.
We are definitely not paying enough attention to this little detail.
Stress + Recovery =Growth
Stress without recovery leads to fatigue and poor performance. A lasting decrease in performance can be a sign of overtraining.
We must assess physical(training structure and progression)and psychological(work,family life, studying) stressors and plan recovery for both!
Optimise your sleep to reduce your injury risk 7-9 hour sleep is optimum, we must try to plan and implement it effectively.
Sleep and nutrition are the 2 most powerful but underrated performance enhancers available to athletes use these wisely to reap the benefits.
When it comes to paving the way for success as an athlete, preparation and planning is critical.
A good overall yearly plan and well executed preparation will make it far less likely that you will fall short in actual performance.
‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail’~Benjamin Franklin
Consistency
The number one route to improved performance is to aim for consistency with your training.
Concentrate on the task at hand, neither dwelling on the past nor looking too far forward. The only thing you can control is the present and when you focus on that and remain consistent, you will find your greatest success. Athletes must do everything in their power to stay healthy, injury free and consistent in their training for as long as possible.
Consistent daily improvements lead to big progress over time. Momentum is the backbone of progression.
Training consistently and building up gradually with the right structure and progression will reduce injury risk and improve performance. Don’t be ambitious with your paces in a workout just because you feel good, every workout serves a purpose!!! Remember we are trying to extend our ability to run at a certain pace.
Don’t rush development. Also, workouts are not predictive, they are developmental-we are trying to change and evolve by manipulating workouts to keep getting better
Recovery runs need to be emphasised as much as everything else and athletes are not paying enough attention to this little detail.
Each session should have a specific purpose, including your easy runs. Could you be hitting those quality sessions even better by going 30-60 seconds slower per mile when going easy. The potential gains here are huge, even beyond the obvious that the easier load on the body means you’re more likely to keep consistently training over weeks, months and years with a healthy body.
Too high a percentage of speed work in your training week will only lead to short term gains. If you are working hard for every single workout and pushing every single workout, you are showing up for the days when you really need to work with less to give basically defeating the whole purpose of that workout date. Maximise your results on tempo/speed days by taking the other days easy.
A well-designed training plan (that is adaptable and adjustable) specific to the athlete followed consistently will maximise results. It will have the proper mix of stress and recovery and ensures the right type of training occurs at the right time.
2. Variety
Variability is a runners best friend.
It is critical for all endurance runners of all levels to have plenty of variety in their training.
Creating added stimuli to your training aiding progression, helping prevent injury and keep an enjoyment factor to your training. Running on a variety of different surfaces is important too.
3. Listen to your body
This is the most important thing you can take out of training. Be body intuitive. You know your body more than any training plan does.
Your training plan does not know about the poor night’s sleep you had last night or how the last week of training took a little too much out of you. But you know this and you can listen to what is going on and respond to it to increase your longevity as a runner.
4. Don’t be afraid of change
To learn is to change. If you are not responding positively to a certain type of training, then change it. All runners and athletes have different physiological and psychological make ups, so different types of training works for some and not for others.
5. Goals
A dream written down becomes a goal. You are holding yourself accountable for what it is you want to achieve. Make this dream a reality.
All athletes should set goals for themselves- reasonable and readily achievable short term goals along the way and also longterm goals. It also creates added motivation. How are you getting better today? What will you achieve today? How will you respond to failure and setbacks? This is what sets everyone apart. Will you take a set back in your stride knowing that it is all part of the process or let it get the better of you and give up?
Don’t have a yesterday attitude by dwelling on things that didn’t go well in a previous performance or a tomorrow attitude by procrastinating and not getting things done now.
Believe in your ability to succeed.
Be flexible and realistic with your goals. Accept that there are many ways to reach your objectives then you wont be disturbed by the changes you perhaps need to make.
The process should drive the outcome. Don’t be too driven to the outcome, sometimes it tends to be an outsized level of importance in our lives. Process is taking a step back and trying to emphasize the steps to achieving the big one.
Pitfall:
Goals the are too difficult and over ambitious. Train within yourself. Externalise failure. You don’t know where your talent ceiling is so keep going.
6. Planning
After you have set your goals for the year ahead, it is important that you lay out a plan to help you achieve them, and to get there in the best possible condition.
Use a training diary and record everything so you can look back and reflect on things following a key race or a full season.
Also a plan should be written in pencil and not set in stone. Adjust as needed! Success in running relies on being able to make adaptations when necessary.
You need to evaluate, feedback is needed from a previous years training/racing to reveal areas that need improving or changing.
You need to decide the structure of the annual plan, are you peaking for 1 race or for 2 keys time during the year etc.
Decide your objectives and duration of each phase of annual plan
Preparation Phase (general and specific) This is the time of year that you lay speed/strength/endurance foundations to prepare for more specific training.
Competition Phase (pre comp and comp) More specific training and racing to allow you to be in the best possible shape to race. This phase only works well if you have prepared properly in preceding phase of training.
Transition/Recovery Phase This is the time of year that you allow tue body to transition from hard training and racing and focus on recovery before starting the cycle again.
Taking time off is a good idea, this is a vital part of the training process. Just as the body reacts positively to easy days of training between quality sessions, so can a bit of time away from training allow the body and mind to reach a new level of performance once back to a regular training schedule. (Supplementary training may minimise loss of fitness during the break from running)
We need to quantify training loads with our training cycles (need to look at volume/intensity/time/rate of percieved exertion (RPE)
7. Recovery
Sleep and nutrition are the two most underrated performance enhancers available to all athletes. Use these wisely and reap the rewards in your training and racing. Make your recovery specific to you. We need to monitor the following regularly:
-Mood/motivation
-Sleep quality and duration
-Energy levels
-Muscle soreness
-Resting Heart rate
-Cold/flu symptoms
-Fatigue and stress
-RPE
STRESS~RECOVER~ADAPT
8. Basics
Too many athletes seek to go after the advanced training methods before nailing the basics. Master the basic fundamental training areas, recovery methods etc. first before you try advancing your training. The basics when done well on a consistent basis lead to great results.
Understand the concept of each run you are doing. Know what is each run trying to accomplish.
As a runner, we want to run in the most efficient manner possible to limit wasting energy. Spend time working on your run mechanics to help you run more fluent and relaxed through run drills, strength and conditioning programme, hill running and strides/short sprints on flat & on steep hills. This combination will help you run more effortlessly.
9. Patience The bottom line is that endurance training can be monotonous at times, you don’t always see quick results, you must deal with setbacks etc so patience in the process delivers time and time again.
Wishing you every success are you prepare for their next season😊
Michelle Greaney
Athletics Ireland National Level 2 Endurance Running Coach
‘a personal capacity to deliver high performance on a regular basis, despite varying degrees of situational demands’
We can all relate to this where we have had the initial motivation to perform a task when the thought arises in our head before certain circumstances arise (weather, work, traffic etc) limits our capacity to perform the task as we want to and therefore don’t attempt the task at all. Now obviously some circumstances are beyond our control and part of being mentally tough is accepting this, however what we must learn from this definition is that if we want to be mentally tough, we must focus on our behaviour and not our thoughts. You must behave in a mentally tough way and not just think about behaving in this way. Backing up day to day and week to week, regardless of the circumstances is the key to demonstrating mentally tough behaviours and will be the cornerstone to our success in our own goals for our running.
Dont think, do!
We can be in the best shape of our lives, but if we lack mental toughness when we toe the line, we may as well kiss our goal time goodbye.
When you set your goals and select your race whether it is a 5k or marathon or triathlon , you need to be diligent and committed to the cause.
Dive into it, live it, breathe it, trust your training.
You must be prepared to go to bed pretty tired and wake up tired regardless of your level of training.
Identify the barriers that may prevent you from achieving your goal and work out how to get around them (days and times and length of time you can train for), family and work commitments)
Plan your programme, be flexible with this.
Commit to the training required.
If you are serious about running a marathon or doing a triathlon, then you must be serious about making the commitment. Getting to the start line has nothing to do with chance and everything to do with preparation and work ethic.
You must give 100% of what you have, you must challenge your mind. Harness the power of your mind to help you to succeed. You must get to your place of struggle and push past it. Focus on the task at hand. You are building the character of the person that you want to be.
The hardest part of running, cycling or swimming is how we think about these disciplines. Your mental relationship with them defines your experiences. By focussing more on the mental side of things, you can boost your confidence before your key races and build intrinsic motivation so that you are training and racing for the right reasons.
A big avenue for improvement is mastering your mindset and improving your confidence, willingness to suffer sometimes and find the motivation to run consistently. Resist the urge to quit, embrace difficulty, and respond positively to setbacks.
The 4 C’s of Mental Fitness-Commitment, Confidence, Control & Concentration
Commitment-ability to continue working toward your agreed goals. After you set your goal, relentlessly pursue, persist through obstacles and take pride in what you are doing along the way.
Confidence-belief in your abilities. It speaks volumes. A state of mind that comes from knowing you have the ability to meet the demands of situations you are likely to face. Knowing you are prepared physically and mentally. You can influence your own confidence, it can vary up and down so it takes constant nurturing. Your confidence and your trust in your training can 100% aid your performance in workouts and race day.
To build your confidence, you must reflect on past training and performances, remember the successful performances, visualize how it went and felt, all your hard work paying off, focus on the positives.
We need to exercise control over our self talk, the influence of our thoughts may be either positive and self enhancing or negative and self defeating.
Speak kindly to yourself 🙂
Control-ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction. Until you control yourself, you cannot control your performance.
Thoughts and feelings ⇒ Actions and behaviours. Don’t let the fear of failure control your emotions. Deal with performance anxiety long before race day. It really boils down to a single choice. We have a choice when the going gets tough to either listen to those thoughts or steer them in a positive direction that helps support our desires. It’s really just the art of paying attention and the privilege of shaping that choice to persevere and every choice either takes us closer to or further away from our goal. We must train with a positive attitude every day.
We train to build and race to test. If we remove performance anxiety from the daily training environment then we are starting to understand endurance disciplines.
Concentration-ability to maintain focus. Focus mental effort on the task at hand. Don’t ride the line of in-between, there are black and white decisions that we have to make in training workouts and race situations
Michelle Greaney (Level 2 National Athletics Ireland Endurance Coach)
Michelle Greaney Run Coaching 