This dude sounds like a weenie that doesn't know how to leave his comfort zone. Some got it, some don't. You're best bet might be to be brutally honest with him and tell him to grow a pair.
This dude sounds like a weenie that doesn't know how to leave his comfort zone. Some got it, some don't. You're best bet might be to be brutally honest with him and tell him to grow a pair.
Not a Coach wrote:
Birdseye wrote:
You are all worried about a single race (where he actually PR'd)? Training isn't a formula where you input certain numbers and immediately spit out a big new PR. Learn a little patience. Have you ever coached before? You seem to have a poor constitution for it.
That said, he probably is a bit overcooked. The OCD (which you seem to share) is a red flag for overtraining. Try being a bit lazier and more spontaneous. I get huge improvements from people from all walks, because I teach them to truly listen to their body.
I am humbled by you sir. You are clearly a great man and a spectacular coach. I'm sorry to waste your time.
I apologize for not noticing your handle in my first post. You are definitely "not a coach", and very good at living up to that. Props for that much. I hope that the runner you advised was well aware of that as well.
He should continue to run more races. This was a rustbuster. He should get used to racing and be able to run faster.
Lots of possible factors, most of them already covered:
- The guy could have just had an off day.
- More likely than not, the guy has no idea how much he is supposed to hurt during races.
- What strikes me as likely the biggest contributor after those two things is that the guy wasn't hitting his paces in workouts. If he is supposed to be doing 3-5 intervals at 5k/10k pace (and at 10k pace, that's a marginal at best workout with the rest he was probably getting) and was not hitting his pace, what actual adaptation do you think occurred, especially given the reduced volume as compared to what an experienced runner would do? Probably very little if any. Same thing if he is doing a 15-20 minute tempo effort and isn't hitting the goal pace. Even if he was coming close to the goal pace on the tempo efforts, he probably wasn't getting much additional adaptation from that workout as compared to his old approach to training since he approached threshold pace on some of his daily runs under his old approach, so there may not have been much fruit left on the LT adaptation tree.
So there is a real chance that the only real adaptations effectuated by the three month training plan, a month or more of which may have been wasted because he was doing everything wrong before progressing to just doing some things wrong, was maybe a running economy adaptation from the shorter reps during the fartlek runs.
If he did another similar training cycle, but actually ran at 5k pace during the 3-5 minute intervals, and ran at 6:40 pace for the 20 minute tempo runs, I think he would produce a better outcome next time around (although I would agree with the poster who suggested you don't want to do the same things every week for 12 weeks - although I don't think that was an issue in the case of the recent race).