Sustainable Endurance Training

Day Zero Action Plan: handling a niggle before it gets serious This is your immediate action plan when a niggle or injury sets in with training. Many athletes make the mistake of either doing nothing or trying to do everything. The key is somewhere in the middle. Niggles often need a little rest, a drop in volume, and one or two targeted exercises. There is no need to try every recovery method out there. Save this email for the next time you notice a niggle. (Quick note: Today I am mostly...

Your Best Season Ever Part 3: Getting race specific Let’s fast forward a few months into your training. You have built a stellar block of easy training, you nailed your strength training and you spent some time working on top speed. The next block you want to add is your interval work - which gets us more race-specific. One of the big problems is that race-pace is vastly different for every athlete. Usually though it ends up being at the top of zone 2, bottom of zone 3 for many long course...

Your Best Season Ever Part 2: Building your base I like to think about training as building a puzzle. Most people start with the edges (this gives structure). What are your goals for the season? Then you could work on the next easiest thing (a bright tree). What are the easiest-to-spot aspects? Slowly you fill in the gaps with what’s left. A bad approach would be to start with a random puzzle piece and work around it. Similar to how some athletes plan their season. Adding in random workouts...

Your Best Season Ever Part 1: the overall structure and plan. Many athletes seem to get stuck in the next-race mentality. They are constantly building towards the next big event without stopping to decide if that’s the right approach. I think there is a better way. One that allows you to have your best race performance and builds towards your best season ever. Underestimating what’s possible As humans, we underestimate what we can do over a longer timeline and underestimate what we can do in...

Re-building your endurance after an injury Part 3: Adding the extras into your week In the last 3 parts, you built up your frequency and added a long run. Now it’s time to add some running workouts. Here’s your plan: one workout a week and watch your speed return. The final stage in your complete return to run plan is to add faster running: Speed / tempo work Hills Strides and sprints These are your running workouts. When you’re coming back from an injury there is 1 critical principle I want...

Re-building your endurance after an injury Part 2: Building volume in your week Once you can handle consistent 30 min runs it’s time to build your volume with frequency. Frequent running is the safest and easiest way to increase volume. Here’s how I coach runners to build frequency in their week: Often the hardest part of getting back to running is building to 30 mins of running. Once you’re there you can progress nicely until you have the desired frequency. A progression for you to try at...

Re-building your endurance after an injury Part 1: Return to Running In part 0, I covered a cross-training plan for endurance training. Once you’re cleared for running we can begin to build your tolerance to running. I coach runners through this with walk-run progressions. Here’s how I build a walk-run progression for a runner: Your first goal when building back your running is nailing a 30 min run. The way we can get there is with walk-run intervals. Some coaches seem to hate them - I love...

Re-building your endurance after an injury Part 0: Cross-Training for fitness Following an endurance injury there are 3 phases I coach athletes through to expose them to more training. Before beginning that process it’s key to figure out a cross-training routine that you can handle while rehabbing your injury. Here’s how I build a cross-training plan with a runner: If you’re currently dealing with an injury the best thing you can do is figure out how to train some endurance without ticking...

Sustainable endurance training: thriving without a race on the calendar I have been having similar conversations with a few of my athletes right now. “How do I structure my training when there are no races on the calendar?” As endurance athletes, we thrive on challenges. Going after big races. PR’s on a distance. Pushing ourselves to do more. But what if we are missing the point? I want to challenge the notion that you need to race every single year. It’s ok to have a season where there is no...

A beginners guide to zone training When you first start HR training, you will only have 3 zones. Trying to break it into 5 or 7 zones leads to confusion and feeling awful when you’re not hitting your numbers. Zones are arbitrary numbers on a continuum. A continuum that changes with training and with non-training. As runners, we can use the concept of zone training but apply it over the whole week. The 3 zones you will be focusing on as a beginner Easy Moderate Fast For now, we don’t need to...