5 WAYS TO RECON YOUR RACES It had been 10 years since I ran the local race series but I was excited to pin on the bib number and challenge myself. The series featured 7 (mostly trail) races of distances as short as one mile and as long as a half-marathon. As the first race…
After coaching so many runners – from new runners just getting started to Olympians and every thing in between – you start to see patterns and tendencies. Patterns of successful runners and tendencies of those that fail to hit their goal. In coaching, my #1 job is to help runners avoid the tendencies that keep…
I boarded a plane and headed to Boston. It was my annual pilgrimage to the Boston Marathon. I had 252 McMillan athletes running and was excited to get to town, meet up with them and put the finishing touches on all the prep they’d done for the big day. As always, expectations were high. Everyone…
CAN RUNNING TWICE ON LONG RUN DAYS SPEED RECOVERY? Before the 1996 U.S. Olympic marathon trials, I coached a woman who had long been doing a short shake-out run in the evening after her long run. She’d run 18–24 miles in the morning, rest all day (like we all should do after a long run),…
ARE WATER STOPS SLOWING YOUR TIME? In 2009, I raced the USA Marathon Trail Championships. It was my fifth marathon and I achieved my goal of becoming national masters champion. While accomplishing this goal was valuable, I may have learned a more valuable lesson that all runners can apply to their marathon racing. Unlike most…
Like every coach and runner, I learn (and re-learn) new lessons all the time. Here are 6 lessons I’ve learned over the years and the training ideas that I recommend applying more often in training. #1: YEAR-ROUND LEG SPEED TRAINING Staying fast, yet avoiding anaerobic training is the key to building your basic leg speed…
There will be times throughout your training year where you may want to substitute a workout for what is planned on your schedule. Let’s say your local running group is doing a set of mile repeats but you have a Tempo Run scheduled. You may wonder if this is okay or not. Here is my…
First we called it “stretching.” Then, the word stretching went out of fashion and we started calling it “flexibility.” Soon, “flexibility” was no longer in vogue and we started calling it “mobility.” And I have to admit, I do like “mobility” best as it gets at the end goal (optimal mobility) as opposed to the…
TWEAK TRAINING FOR BETTER RESULTS SIMPLY BY KNOWING YOUR RUNNER TYPE Runners can usually be divided into three general types — Speedsters, Endurance Monsters and Combo Runners – based on how they respond to training and racing. Think about your training and racing history and see which description sounds most like you. Speedsters The Speedster…
A KINDER, GENTLER TRANSITION TO EARLY SUMMER SPEED WORK In 2004, I helped a very talented runner build a solid aerobic base for the U.S. Olympic trials marathon, only to fail her during the race preparation phase of her training. I didn’t take into account her drive and tenacity, and when I put her on…