posted May-18-2007 04:04 PM               

That's a more complicated question than it seems. Most of the improvements I made was done on my own in a way. I read as much as I could, which in those days was much more limited than now. What I did read was mostly written by or about people who were much faster than I was. There was still quite a bit that was contradictory. I figured the first thing I had to do was to filter out the ideas that I didn't like or had tried without much success.
I had begun to find that I did better when I ran more and kept the pace comfortable, so I narrowed down my reading to people who'd succeeded with that sort of approach. Eventually that lead to Lydiard who was the most successful of those promoting endurance based training. But there were a couple of things about his ideas that I misunderstood and I nearly killed myself the first time I tried doing his stuff. So I went and did my own adaption of it. It's a long story, but later, when I met him, I learned that I'd misunderstood how he did things and that the way I'd done it was pretty close to how he meant things to work. Sorry that's so general but it's a fairly long story.
The point is that if you found an approach that you were comfortable with, read up on it and applied it you could get pretty close to your best on your own.
But there is so much information now that it's easy to get suckered into questioning what you're doing if your progress stalls, and it will at times. Then you can fall into the trap of switching methods whenever you aren't getting the results you want and that won't get you anyplace.
If you can find an approach you believe in and stick with it you can coach yourself. But if you have a hard time figuring out what you like, what you think will work, how to adjust the approach when you aren't getting the results you think you should, it would help to have a coach who can use the general approach you want.
I do think that a lot of people who take up the sport as adults and who get serious about it probably have a hard time figuring out what to do because there are so many people with so many ideas and because these folks didn't have the experience of running in high school or college where they at least get a starting point.
I always found that talking with successful runners or reading the "How They Train" books was very good "coaching" as it allowed me to see exactly how people did things. But you have to be careful to adapt what you read to your circumstances.

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posted May-18-2007 04:15 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Brian McN:
I'm not Nobby or Rengle but I can give some insight on how a coach has helped me.
Sometimes it's real difficult to look at things objectively. I need someone looking at the whole picture. Where I am now and the five year plan. Even the best elite runners who have a great knowledge of training benefit from having a coach for that reason.
I can remember several times over the past couple of years where I needed to know something about my training that would have been perfectly clear to me had I been coaching someone like myself.
I'm coaching someone now and I feel I have way better control over her running than my own.
You certainly don't have to be an advanced runner to benefit from a coaches' guidance.
I'm lucky in that my friend is also my coach. He like Kim is also from New Zealand. He coaches a few runners right now (I'm his slowest, for now) and takes no money from anyone for it. He does it for pure enjoyment. I get the feeling this is a trait of most coaches in New Zealand. Kim, correct me if I'm wrong.

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Geez Mate !!! ; The day I get paid to Coach the proverbial Pigs might fly.
This is a Major problem here in NZ as good people walk away from Coaching because there is no money and time becomes precious. Arthur Lydiard's story is a classic. Quite a few innovative Coaches in other Sports have had to leave our shores to follow their passion
I am lucky I am a Physical Education Teacher by Proffesion (Head of my Faculty) so I can dive out the door of my School at 4:00pm to meet runners.
I have only ever recieved "expenses" to go to meets.

To answer Richard99's question about Coaching 'Slower" than 3hr runners.
No I have not but I have taken some from the high 3hrs to the 3hr and sub 3hr mark.
But I have gotten a few people out just "jogging" for health and then they may have wanted a challenge of say a 10k or a 1/2 marathon. I helped my Principal get a sub 2hr !/2 marathon this year and last on 4 to 5 days a week running.

However, I tend to put my time into top High School runners and those at the top end of the sport.
Fastest Marathoner : Coached ; 2:22 (40 years old !!!). Same guy for 1/2 Marathon : 1:08. 10 miles ; 50:10 . 10k 29:20 (Road)
Now if someone wanted to pay me to Coach 4 hr plus runners !! That would be a different story !!

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Run easy, Run long

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posted May-18-2007 04:19 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard99:
For the simple reason that you 3 are quite vocal about training & physiological topics.

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What does my coaching have to do with training and physiological topics? I don't have to be a coach to discuss those topics. The idea is to have experience, either as a coach or a runner, on issues. If you're professing something as the best way to train, show it's success. We know that your training, in so far as yourself is concerned, has left you virtually unable to run, despite being much younger than me. That more or less rules out your own experiences as a demonstration of success, so I guess the others are asking you about your coaching history to see if you've at least brought it to others.

[This message has been edited by JimR (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 04:43 PM               

I have been involved in the sport of running for nearly 35 years; involved in running in Japan, New Zealand, Australia as well as US. Have talked to many peolpe; beginners to elites, Olympic champions. I want to "help" others based on what I've learnt over the years; as a runner myself and as a coach; professinal Japanese corporate team coach as well as one of the "instructors" for Beginning Women's Jogging class for MDRA. And I feel I've done a decent job.

Then people come around and ask us if we've ever coached (actually) "slow" runners as if it were a sin to make them "faster". Richard, you are the one who asked me and Rengle and Kim if we have had any experience with 5-hour marathon people. Not too many; not even directly. Then YOUR answer was "I haven't coached any elite..." What kind of answer is that? I thought we were talking about our coaching experience with SLOW marathon runners; if we were even qualified to make any suggestion to slow runners. Then you turned around and accused of others what kind of coaching credential they have. Well, then why the hell are we even listening to a 5-hour marathon runners training secrets for? What is your point; just want to argue for the sake or arguing? Go to letsrun to do that; you'll have a plenty of buddies to do that with.

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posted May-18-2007 04:50 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mrinertia:
I'm an intermediate runner and I've been monitoring this thread pretty closely for a while. Between solid credentials and general common sense, I'm convinced that the Nobby/rengle camp has the most to offer. Here's my question: at what point do you think a runner needs an actual coach? I get decent advice from a local running club and a friend/mentor who got me interested in the sport. I've only been running for a year and have made a lot of progress and am still improving at a steady pace. I want with all of my heart to be fast, though, and I'm nowhere close. Not "fast for a big guy" or "fast for a beginner" but fast. I want to win a 10k and a hm. I want to BQ and take my age group in a marathon. Do you think I should keep progressing the best way I can until my rate of improvement plateaus? Do you think a coach this early in my training would be much more helpful than what I'm doing now? Do you need more info from me before answering my question?

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Mrinertia:

My take on your specific question on "coaching" is; benefit of coaching, or proper guidance, begins WAAAAAAAY before you actually start to perform well. Those Kenyan kids did not have ANY coach when they were 12~18 years old. But they had more natural nutrition, more natural footwear (mainly barefoot), no pressure from stopwatch or heart rate monitor but miles and miles and miles of enjoyable stroll up and down the hills over natural terrain. They don't come to university in the US one day and all of a sudden start to do killer intervals and run great; their foundation was being formed years before they got their first passport. If you're already doing all those things without knowing it, your need to have a "qualified" coach and/or guidance can wait a bit. Otherwise, two brains are always better than one.

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posted May-18-2007 05:08 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Nobby:
My take on your specific question on "coaching" is; benefit of coaching, or proper guidance, begins WAAAAAAAY before you actually start to perform well.

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Well, that's it then. I ain't racing again until after retirement. That'll give me a good 20 more years of base.

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posted May-18-2007 05:13 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by rengle:
Ok. Does that mean something or is it just a random comment?

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It does not mean much. The coaches I met before my last marathon asked me my marathon time and the conversations pretty much ended there. They were picky. They never asked how much I trained or what I was doing. They had a preset standard they wanted met, and I had yet to obtain that standard. Therefore, I could not be coached by them. So, I coach myself.

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posted May-18-2007 05:19 PM               

For those closer to experience with elites, how do these numbers rack up?

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posted May-18-2007 05:20 PM               

Re-read what I've written. I have not made a single accusation about coaching experiences, etc. I simply asked if you, rengle, & Kim had any experience coaching slow runners. Then I asked 3 vocal posters here what their coaching experiences were after comments about my coaching experience were made. I made no judgements or accusations about anyone. Nor did I imply anything.

On the other hand, I believe if you will re-read what others have written you will see the accusations about coaching credentials directed at me.

Now that we have that settled...

I asked about you 3 coaching slow runners for 2 reasons and one of them is not because it is a sin to make a slow runner faster.

First, based mostly the discussion with maryt about training experiences, I wondered if you 3 were speaking from significant coaching experience with slow marathoners. Is it possible that the training methods that work for fast runners might not be as effective with slower runners? I was curious if you guys had coached lots of slow runners and found that the exact same training worked for them (for example, not extending the long run beyond 3 hours) that worked for the faster runners you had coached. If you 3 had coached lots and lots of slow runners to marathon completion and PRs and never had them run more than 3 hours in training, I wondered how that worked out. If you 3 had lots of slow runners running 50 mpw was it your experience they were slow because they weren't really trying hard. Those are the kinds of things I was wondering about and would have then asked if you had indicated you had worked with lots and lots of slow runners.

The 2nd reason I asked about your experience with slow runners is that a few pages back tigger wrote "I guess I WAS suggesting that the hundred or so years of coaching experience by these gentlemen, where they have worked with thousands (note - this is the sample size) of athletes, should count heavily when generalizing training principles and giving training advice to those of us who are less experienced." One of the things about generalizing from a group of subjects is determing if the results are applicable to other, different groups of subjects. The results from one population might not be applicable to another, different population. If this is true, then it is possible that the results from faster runners is not fully applicable to slower runners. To be clear, I'm not talking about principles of training, but about the "giving of training advice" he mentioned. Training advice might be population specific. For example, the training that works best for a 25 year old elite runner might not work best for a 60 year old former elite runner.

So, these things stimulated my thinking and caused me to ask the question of you 3. I meant in no way to insult your coaching experiences or to imply you were not good coaches.

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Richard
World's Fastest Slow Guy
www.powerrunning.com

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posted May-18-2007 05:22 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by maryt:
You should not assume a slower runner is not training anywhere near up to their potential or is not interested in improvement compared to a runner who is faster.

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Of course. Some of us are just slowpokes, and we can still be trying to train right up to the limit of our potential. OTOH, I've known a number of guys who ran a 4:20 or so mile in high school and had no interest in training up to their potential later in life. One had no interest at all in running. Another ran regularly and competed in local 5K and 10K races just for fun. He never did completely quit smoking, although he got down to 3-4 cigarettes/day.

Maybe there are other folks like me out there, people who the PE coaches liked to make fun of and embarass. People who were made a laughingstock when we were forced to be in a 2-person runoff to see who was the slowest of 200 guys in the HS class. Some of us just don't have any fast genes, but that doesn't mean we can't try to reach our potential.

Some of us slowpokes can only reach our potential by putting in the mileage, and by making it easy enough. Other ways didn't work for me.

Orvile Atkins, I think, wrote an article "Long Term Comparison" in a 1976 (?) Runner's World Publication titled "Runner's Training Guide." Over 12 years he trained under Igloi, trained with a traditional Lydiard system, and then trained with an "all slow" run-so-you-enjoy-it system. Marathons under all 3 systems were all within a few minutes of each other. The fastest marathon? That was with the "all slow" system, where he finally broke 2:30.

I did best just by putting in the mileage, running a few short fun-run races once in a while, and maybe a teeny bit of speedwork sometimes. Others will prefer a different approach. Fine if it works for you. But a system based on nice, easy distance worked for me... even though I never could keep up over 85 mpw for long.

If people think that just because I was slow I wasn't training up to my potential, they are wrong.
PR mile 5:45
PR marathon 2:57:00- (age 40 6:45 m/m pace)
PR 100K about 9:22 (age 41 9:03 m/m pace)

This makes me in between a category "B" and category "C" runner (see Marty Liquori's "Real Running") at that time, but I had to train at least to "A" level to get there. No talent for running... so what. Lots of us work hard at doing something we have no talent for.

gino

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posted May-18-2007 05:31 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by slowgino:
If people think that just because I was slow I wasn't training up to my potential, they are wrong.
PR mile 5:45
PR marathon 2:57:00- (age 40 6:45 m/m pace)
PR 100K about 9:22 (age 41 9:03 m/m pace)

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gino,

Only 1.6% of the total people who ran marathons in 2005 in the USA ran faster than 3 hours (6,300 out of 382,000 finishers).

USA Marathons and Marathoners 2005

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Richard
World's Fastest Slow Guy
www.powerrunning.com

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posted May-18-2007 05:48 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by JimR:
What does my coaching have to do with training and physiological topics? I don't have to be a coach to discuss those topics. The idea is to have experience, either as a coach or a runner, on issues. If you're professing something as the best way to train, show it's success. We know that your training, in so far as yourself is concerned, has left you virtually unable to run, despite being much younger than me. That more or less rules out your own experiences as a demonstration of success, so I guess the others are asking you about your coaching history to see if you've at least brought it to others.

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Got it - no coaching experience that you will admit to.

For the record, you don't have the first clue as to my personal situation or the health issues I have that impact my training. You display an amazingly high level of arrogance and ignorance when you make any claim about my capabilities, limitations, or my training/performance. Only me and my personal physician are knowledgeable enough and familiar enough with my situation to make any such claims.

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Richard
World's Fastest Slow Guy
www.powerrunning.com

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posted May-18-2007 05:57 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard99:
For the record, you don't have the first clue as to my personal situation or the health issues I have that impact my training.

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You've said in previous posts your knees are shot. You've mainly attributed it to running but also alluded that your military service may have had an impact. I've no clue what else you have going on. I'm only going by what you've said.

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posted May-18-2007 06:00 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by JimR:
You've said in previous posts your knees are shot. You've mainly attributed it to running but also alluded that your military service may have had an impact. I've no clue what else you have going on. I'm only going by what you've said.

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I don't believe I ever attributed bad knees to running because my bad knees are not due to running. On the other hand, you have attributed my bad knees to my training, here and in the past, in spite of your complete ignorance about my knees.

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Richard
World's Fastest Slow Guy
www.powerrunning.com

[This message has been edited by Richard99 (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 06:06 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard99:
I don't believe I ever attributed bad knees to running because my bad knees are not due to running.

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"Things progressed smoothly until the late 1990s. For 15 years I had run injury free, following a relatively low mileage, high intensity approach to training. In the mid '90s, around the time I left the Army, I became much more interested in competitive running. Leaving the service meant I was no longer obligated to follow the Army's prescribed exercise program; I was free to choose my own. I had been reading the standard running books of the day, books by Galloway, Henderson, and Higdon amongst others, and decided to adopt a more conventional training program - namely increasing mileage to improve performance. Bad choice. Instead of improving my performance, I ended up injured. And injury followed injury, finally resulting in knee surgery on both knees (though to be fair, my days as a paratrooper probably made me more susceptible to knee injury). For about three years I did almost no running because of various overuse injuries."

anyway, it's just a pissing contest now.

I'm outta here for a bit.

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posted May-18-2007 06:13 PM               

Furthermore, why did you choose to ignore the point in that quote about increasing mileage as conventional wisdom suggests and knee surgery? An honest person looking to jump to conclusions would conclude that high mileage training led to permanent problems.

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Richard
World's Fastest Slow Guy
www.powerrunning.com

[This message has been edited by Richard99 (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 07:02 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard99:
While we are on the topic of coaching experiences... AndyHass, tigger, and JimR it's your turn.

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I can only draw on my own experience and that of one other runner....my daughter. She is 17. I set up her training plan ala Lydiard to run a 1:40 to 1:45 HM. On May 6 she ran just over 1:36 and came first in her AG in a HM with over 6,000 runners. She was 39th female overall and about 250th overall. Since then she ran her first 1500 in track and managed a 5:21, and followed that up with a 5:19 the other day.

My own results have been posted here from time to time. I will post again if anyone is curious.

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posted May-18-2007 07:16 PM               

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posted May-18-2007 07:17 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by willamona:
It does not mean much. The coaches I met before my last marathon asked me my marathon time and the conversations pretty much ended there. They were picky. They never asked how much I trained or what I was doing. They had a preset standard they wanted met, and I had yet to obtain that standard. Therefore, I could not be coached by them. So, I coach myself.

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Amanda(is it?) their are coaches right here in our local area who would be glad to coach you. You don't even have to pay. You said yourself that you aren't a member of our running clubs(Wyoming valley striders and SOAR). We have some great runners doing weekly interval training sessions, group long runs and the whole bit(lots of women as well). Some of the area's top runners are always droping great information. Hook up with one for a run and you will recieve a wealth of imformation. Just get out their. Races every week are you going to any? Hook up with Kevin Bandru for a sports message from time to time and he will talk your ear off as well. If your interested I'm thinking about hooking up some long training runs on the steamtown course for all the locals training for this year. You should come along.

Edited to add. The interval sessions are at Dunmore's track at 7:00 PM on tuesdays. Everyone is welcome, all levels of experience. You don't have to go nuts just striders if you wish. Also on May 28'th their is an area favorite- The Forty Fort 5 miler. This is my first year doing it but supposedly it's one of the more popular ones in the area. Just check it from our local site. See Ya there!

[This message has been edited by runawayjesse (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 07:52 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by fuzz:
Originally posted by maryt:
"they should be prepared for what's going to happen in their first marathon a whole lot better than just having run 12- 15 miles in training because of some arbitrary "rule" that runs shouldn't be longer than 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Talk about cookie-cutter. "
posted by fuzz -Wait a sec, that's an oversimplification. The original suggestion ten or twelve pages ago was that people probably would get about the same results with 2.5-3 hour long runs as they would with 4-5 hour runs, because the 5-hour slogs require much longer recovery, which makes it difficult to develop pace & stamina on the weekdays. This would be especially true for older runners, no?

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Besides, it isn't that hard to develop pace and stamina if you do those longest runs once you get up to 4 or more hours, only every other week, or even every third week. There's no need to slog through a 4 hour run every single week. Even Pfitzinger's Advanced program has a cut back week after the longest runs. On the plus side, getting in at least one or two of those long runs - 20+ miles however long it takes -during the whole training period really lets you find out those things that it's nice to know - like if you don't take salt tablets with you for the times past the 3 1/2 hour point, you run will stop at a med tent. Nice to know those things beforehand so you can learn how to pevent them and not be surprised come marathon day thinking your 2 1/2 hour runs have prepared you being out on the road over 3 1/2 when they really haven't.

Once you've run at least one, you have a feel for what training you can handle, and how your body will handle the length of time on the road, so by all means try whatever program you want then, experiment, and see what gives you the best results, but I think for the first time out, it's important to get in at least one 20miler whether it takes you 2 hours or 5.

[This message has been edited by maryt (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 07:57 PM               

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posted May-18-2007 07:57 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by runawayjesse:
Amanda(is it?) their are coaches right here in our local area who would be glad to coach you. You don't even have to pay. You said yourself that you aren't a member of our running clubs(Wyoming valley striders and SOAR). We have some great runners doing weekly interval training sessions, group long runs and the whole bit(lots of women as well). Some of the area's top runners are always droping great information. Hook up with one for a run and you will recieve a wealth of imformation. Just get out their. Races every week are you going to any? Hook up with Kevin Bandru for a sports message from time to time and he will talk your ear off as well. If your interested I'm thinking about hooking up some long training runs on the steamtown course for all the locals training for this year. You should come along.

Edited to add. The interval sessions are at Dunmore's track at 7:00 PM on tuesdays. Everyone is welcome, all levels of experience. You don't have to go nuts just striders if you wish. Also on May 28'th their is an area favorite- The Forty Fort 5 miler. This is my first year doing it but supposedly it's one of the more popular ones in the area. Just check it from our local site. See Ya there!

[This message has been edited by runawayjesse (edited May-18-2007).]

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I don't do intervals during base. I am much further north than you. I would have to drive for almost an hour to not do anything but talk. We need something at the top side of the valley. I do not do weekly races. I am not interested in being an age group ace. The local race I did do is where I met the people who do not want to talk much after they heard my marathon time. There is an upcoming race that will be in my neck of the woods soon. Maybe people will be a bit more receptive.

Where do you find this info? SOAR would be closer to me, but their website does not seem to work.

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posted May-18-2007 09:19 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by willamona:
I don't do intervals during base. I am much further north than you. I would have to drive for almost an hour to not do anything but talk. We need something at the top side of the valley. I do not do weekly races. I am not interested in being an age group ace. The local race I did do is where I met the people who do not want to talk much after they heard my marathon time. There is an upcoming race that will be in my neck of the woods soon. Maybe people will be a bit more receptive.

Where do you find this info? SOAR would be closer to me, but their website does not seem to work.

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Amanda I just don't feel you are interested. You can too come along for a for a long run. Kyle(national running center's manager) does runs at the lackawanna state park often. You can run as slow as you like. one time we did 10 miles at something like a 10 m/m and just shot the sh**. Talked shoes and stuff. You do not have to race every week either, I don't. They are always looking for volunteers to work the clocks and such. great way to meet area runners. I do not do interval sessions during base either. Believe it or not you aren;t the only person in the area who base trains. Folks Like Kyle and Chris W are banging 100+ mile weeks. On the female side you have Hedi W(2'nd in womens at Allentown half)that I'm sure is doing high base mileage. Lots of folks come to do leg speed workouts and such. you can meet some of the areas great runners. Go to races and meet some of the top female runners. Really they don't care about your times. Thats in your head. I'm not fast at all yet they are talking to me. Kevin B I'm sure will take you on. He is famous for helping runners achieve their goals. He just brought some 3:20 guys that could not make a BQ time to save there life in at 3:08 last year. Their are women doing the same. My cousin(a female) just trained with a group with the goal of breaking 4 hours. They did it! I think you have something you can offer yourself. Not many runners are banging the mileage you are. Even the top dogs are just about at your volume(thats in the male division too).

My point is don't sit around saying "I'm too slow no one will help me, I need to coach myself". It's out there. Our area has some good runners. I was plodding around at a 10:30 m/m and they talked to me. The place to go is our local web site and ask around. Check the calender for races and come along. I see no reason you can not tempo a 10-15k during your base phase. Just come to jog it, you will meet people, have fun. You can pick up a SOAR membership at races. Also the SOAR crowd go to Dunmore on tuesdays. I know thats not that far from you.

[This message has been edited by runawayjesse (edited May-18-2007).]

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posted May-18-2007 09:40 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by rengle:
I'm an intermediate runner and I've been monitoring this thread pretty closely for a while. Between solid credentials and general common sense, I'm convinced that the Nobby/rengle camp has the most to offer. Here's my question: at what point do you think a runner needs an actual coach? I get decent advice from a local running club and a friend/mentor who got me interested in the sport. I've only been running for a year and have made a lot of progress and am still improving at a steady pace. I want with all of my heart to be fast, though, and I'm nowhere close. Not "fast for a big guy" or "fast for a beginner" but fast. I want to win a 10k and a hm. I want to BQ and take my age group in a marathon. Do you think I should keep progressing the best way I can until my rate of improvement plateaus? Do you think a coach this early in my training would be much more helpful than what I'm doing now? Do you need more info from me before answering my question?

That's a more complicated question than it seems. Most of the improvements I made was done on my own in a way. I read as much as I could, which in those days was much more limited than now. What I did read was mostly written by or about people who were much faster than I was. There was still quite a bit that was contradictory. I figured the first thing I had to do was to filter out the ideas that I didn't like or had tried without much success.
I had begun to find that I did better when I ran more and kept the pace comfortable, so I narrowed down my reading to people who'd succeeded with that sort of approach. Eventually that lead to Lydiard who was the most successful of those promoting endurance based training. But there were a couple of things about his ideas that I misunderstood and I nearly killed myself the first time I tried doing his stuff. So I went and did my own adaption of it. It's a long story, but later, when I met him, I learned that I'd misunderstood how he did things and that the way I'd done it was pretty close to how he meant things to work. Sorry that's so general but it's a fairly long story.
The point is that if you found an approach that you were comfortable with, read up on it and applied it you could get pretty close to your best on your own.
But there is so much information now that it's easy to get suckered into questioning what you're doing if your progress stalls, and it will at times. Then you can fall into the trap of switching methods whenever you aren't getting the results you want and that won't get you anyplace.
If you can find an approach you believe in and stick with it you can coach yourself. But if you have a hard time figuring out what you like, what you think will work, how to adjust the approach when you aren't getting the results you think you should, it would help to have a coach who can use the general approach you want.
I do think that a lot of people who take up the sport as adults and who get serious about it probably have a hard time figuring out what to do because there are so many people with so many ideas and because these folks didn't have the experience of running in high school or college where they at least get a starting point.
I always found that talking with successful runners or reading the "How They Train" books was very good "coaching" as it allowed me to see exactly how people did things. But you have to be careful to adapt what you read to your circumstances.

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That makes a lot of sense. Right now my progress hasn't stalled - far from it. And, while I've taken advice from experienced runners, I've certainly never adopted a specific training philosophy. Lately, I've just been adding miles and it's improved my pace significantly. Looks like some reading, research and adding miles will be my path for the next while. Thanks for sharing your experience.

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posted May-18-2007 11:50 PM            

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Originally posted by runawayjesse:
Amanda I just don't feel you are interested. You can too come along for a for a long run. Kyle(national running center's manager) does runs at the lackawanna state park often. You can run as slow as you like. one time we did 10 miles at something like a 10 m/m and just shot the sh**. Talked shoes and stuff. You do not have to race every week either, I don't. They are always looking for volunteers to work the clocks and such. great way to meet area runners. I do not do interval sessions during base either. Believe it or not you aren;t the only person in the area who base trains. Folks Like Kyle and Chris W are banging 100+ mile weeks. On the female side you have Hedi W(2'nd in womens at Allentown half)that I'm sure is doing high base mileage. Lots of folks come to do leg speed workouts and such. you can meet some of the areas great runners. Go to races and meet some of the top female runners. Really they don't care about your times. Thats in your head. I'm not fast at all yet they are talking to me. Kevin B I'm sure will take you on. He is famous for helping runners achieve their goals. He just brought some 3:20 guys that could not make a BQ time to save there life in at 3:08 last year. Their are women doing the same. My cousin(a female) just trained with a group with the goal of breaking 4 hours. They did it! I think you have something you can offer yourself. Not many runners are banging the mileage you are. Even the top dogs are just about at your volume(thats in the male division too).

My point is don't sit around saying "I'm too slow no one will help me, I need to coach myself". It's out there. Our area has some good runners. I was plodding around at a 10:30 m/m and they talked to me. The place to go is our local web site and ask around. Check the calender for races and come along. I see no reason you can not tempo a 10-15k during your base phase. Just come to jog it, you will meet people, have fun. You can pick up a SOAR membership at races. Also the SOAR crowd go to Dunmore on tuesdays. I know thats not that far from you.

[This message has been edited by runawayjesse (edited May-18-2007).]

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Dunmore is about 45 minutes to an hour from here depending on traffic. I don't live in Exeter any more. Quit being defensive and relax. Where do you find the information on the meetings (both SOAR and these long runs you mention)? This is what I am asking. I do not see this stuff on the local site or even in the threads there. Where is this state park at? I only know of Francis-Slocum (too far from here). I know how to find the races and I am checking out a local one this weekend. I would love to meet the kind of people you speak of, especially if there are any closer to my neck of the woods.

And unfortunately, whether you believe it or not, two people thought I was too slow to even continue conversations with me at the last local race I attended in the Wilkes-Barre area (this was in reaction to my first marathon time, not my race time that day). I can not fix that in a person. All I can do is keep my ears open for local info. That is all I am going to do at the race this weekend as I am not running (just another freakin' 5k. Too many 5k's here.) Maybe I will get a better reaction with my latest marathon time, if it comes up. Just someone to at least bounce ideas off of every now and then would be nice.

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