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Shalane Flanagan Wins EDP Lisbon Half - What Does That Tell Us?

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Weekly Free Coaching Advice - Be Yourself & Progress Logically In Your Training

There wasn't a lot of action last week, so we'll entertain you with two free aspects of weekly coaching advice. The first comes from US 5,000 Olympic hopeful Lauren Fleshman. The following excerpt from a Running Times feature on her talks about how she didn't hit her stride post-collegiately until she stopped trying to be like everyone else and decided to do what works best for her:

"It was this light bulb [going off]: 'You will run faster if you're just yourself and stop trying to be someone else.'" She gave herself permission to enjoy life away from the track and to indulge interests other than running faster. The lesson she'd learned in Europe finally paid off ... In 2005, while racing in Europe, she noticed that every athlete had a unique approach. The formula that worked for a Paula Radcliffe wouldn't work for a Lauren Fleshman. She just had to figure out what that meant. "In order for me to put my foot down and say, 'I'm doing things my way,' it takes a lot of confidence," Fleshman says. "I didn't have that for a few years. I was still fumbling around trying to figure out what worked for me."

The second piece of coaching advice is more related to training and gets at the heart of one of our key principles of training. To us, running is very simple. The easiest way to improve in your running is to progress in your training each year.

Now for most, to progress in your training means to run a little bit more each year, as the vast majority of distance runners don't run enough. But that doesn't have to mean that a high schooler should go out and run 100 miles per week or a pro should go out and run 120 per week. The key is to progess in a logical amount each year. Most people can safely handle a 10-15 miles/week increase in a given year. Often after a particularly bad or a particularly good year, people overdo it and try to do way too much.

Case in point - Chris Solinsky. Solinsky is on the comeback trail after having surgery to reattach his hamstring to his pelvis. How did he get hurt? Well, he overdid it, as explained by the following excerpt from a Runnersworld feature on him.

"My hamstring had basically ripped off my pelvis," said Solinsky ...

The reason for all of this, Solinsky says, was that his 2011 self tried to out-do his 2010 self. In 2010, he had five weeks over 120 miles, and 30 weeks over 100 miles. In 2011, his goal was to double or even triple the number of weeks over 120. He got in 12, counted in the famous "Badger Miles," where all miles are 7:00 miles.

More: The Professional: Lauren Fleshman Finds herself In Oregon *Rehabbing Chris Solinsky Racing For Time

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Spearmon Runs Fast & We USATF Tells You About It

LRC Wallace Spearmon Runs 19.95 In March! We usually don't talk about sprinters too much in March, but a 19.95 this early in the year deserves mention. We did some research and realized that no one in the history of the world had run sub-20.00 in the Northern hemisphere in March until now. Spearmon's Achilles injury is clearly behind him. And we noticed USATF made Spearmon Athlete of the Week and cited all the stats from our article about this being the earliest sub 20.00 in the Northern Hemisphere and Spearmon now having run 22 sub-20-second 200s, tying Usain Bolt. Now they didn't link back to little* LRC, and these are just facts, but next time maybe we'll cite them incorrectly and see what happens. Because we and you always have cool little pranks people are falling for.

*Actually, we shouldn't call ourselves little LRC, as our site is way bigger than theirs if alexa.com is to be believed.

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5 Quotes Of The Week (That Weren't Quotes Of The Day)

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#1 - "I feel like I've put in the training a gold medallist would need to do, but that has to continue over the next couple of months. I'm just really thankful to be in a position where I can say I've had some of the best training of my life over the past six weeks. As that continues, the sky's the limit in terms of what can happen in London."

- 2008 Olympic silver medallist at 1,500, Nick Willis, talking to the New Zealand Herald last week prior to backing up his bold statement with a resounding 11+ second victory at 5,000 over training partner Will Leer, who himself has already run 13:37 this year.

More: Nick Willis Crushes Will Leer - Wins NZ 5,000 Title & Says He Can Run 13:10 & Do 1,500/5k Double At Olympics MB: Can Willis medal at 5k? *Willis Eases To 5,000m Title *Willis Pre-Race On 1,500 Chances: "I feel like I've put in the training a gold medallist would need to do." "The sky's the limit in terms of what can happen in London."

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#2 - "Sports generally are not spending enough on anti-doping agencies and not putting enough blood testing forward. That being the case, I suspect HGH cheats are getting away with it. What is an effective and robust program? It's a hell of a lot more than 2 percent of the samples being blood samples. It's probably got to be 15 percent, or maybe 20 percent blood samples to be effective."

- World anti-toping president John Fahey reacting to the news last week that came out that only 5,000 of the 258,267 (1.9%) drug tests that were conducted by WADA last year were blood tests. We agree with Fahey - that's an unacceptably low number. We'd rather they do 50,000 tests but include blood tests in all of them.

More: Anti-Doping Chief Calls For More Blood Testing To Catch "Cheats"

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#3 - "I was disappointed (to not be selected to carry the Olympic torch). In my area it seemed to be about charities. These people ought to be recognised, and are, for the work they do. But this is about sport and Olympians, for heaven's sake. I cannot see any other country in the world celebrating having the Olympics on home soil in this way. My sentiments are the same for the treatment of Olympians in the tickets saga."

- 2:09:38 marathoner and former European and Commonwealth champion Ron Hill, talking to Athletics Weekly about being left out of the thousands who were selected to carry the Olympic torch in the UK. Making Hill's snub all the more bitter is the fact that London Olympic chief Seb Coe has admitted that Hill is one of the men who inspired Coe to go into athletics.

More: Running icon Hill overlooked for torch honour

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#4 - "I've spoken to Alberto and he thinks I am a lot better than I was this time last year. I got 3,000m gold at the European Indoors last March. But the time I won it with (7:53.00) wouldn't even have made the final this year (7:52.35 was the last time qualifier).

That shows you the difference in the level you step up to at the worlds."

- 2011 5k world champion Mo Farah talking to The Sun about his failure to win a medal at Worlds this year. Farah's quote reveals something about the nature of running that is often forgotten. A race shouldn't be labeled as "bad" or "good" just based on whether someone wins or not. The level of competition varies widely.

LetsRun.com co-founder Robert Johnson has a rule he uses when coaching guys at Cornell. If they run a PR and are beaten, he doesn't let them be too upset about it.

More: I cannot rest on my laurels

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#5 - "When it snowed, I kept trying to catch the flakes but it always melted in my hands, but after three days the excitement was over and it was just very, very cold."

- Norway's 2:09 Olympic marathoner Urige Buta, who immigrated from Ethiopia, talking in a fantastic piece on him from Reuters about the first time he encountered snow. Buta is worth reading about because he works a full-time job as a janitor.

More: Running janitor set for Olympics