Is it smart to do your own training? How long of a running career would you need to have enough knowledge?

Which event?

I don't think you need a lot of knowledge, you just need to know what kind of runner you are and find training plans of similar successful runners. Sweatelite.com is a good resource for this. A lot of great coaches put out books as well.

If you are a distance guy (a guy who runs the mile and up) then training methodology is simple, if you're a mid-d guy it gets a little more complicated.

You need to spend more time actually running and less time thinking about running.

Currently, the training I have in mind is cross country (3-3.1 miles). This is the training that I feel I am going into semi-blind. When I mention I am doing mile repeats early season, some people will say that is not the right way to train. I have heard of Sweat Elite but have also heard they steal training from other sources and aren’t always reliable. Just not sure I have the right idea of how to train over the summer. I have a spreadsheet of my general idea, for the first couple weeks. I will probably post it tomorrow morning.

Agree on the former, not so much on the latter. Train smarter, not harder is often emphasized.

A person who has never done any running in his life knows more about running than the average tenured Division 1 college coach. That being true because he has not learned any misinformation yet.

I trained myself for about 6 years in my late 20's/early 30's. Got some decent results (broke my old high school prs from 800 to 5k and I was an all-state miler in HS) but couldn't stay healthy and hit a plateau.

My last competitive season I finally hired a coach. It was mostly because I was so frustrated with my injuries and thought maybe someone else could keep me healthy.

Well, I was never 100% healthy the entire season (even from day 1 I was nursing a chronic injury) but on 5 days per week of running, probably 45 miles per week, this guy had me running as fast as I did at 60 mpw. I was doing really awesome things in training and I think it was the fittest I ever was. Of course the injury bug finally caught up with me so sadly I don't have the race times that I think would have matched my training. Oh well.

But honestly it opened my eyes to what a good coach could do. I believe I was faster on less work due to smarter training. There was generally more rest than I would have given. More strides. More high end aerobic (on my own I tended to ignore paces slower than tempo but faster than easy). More workouts mixing different speeds. Some workouts that sounded hard on paper and I never would have assigned them to myself but I tried them and succeeded. So all this stuff that was different than when I trained myself even though I was familiar with Daniels, Coe, Rubio, etc.

A good coach is worth it.

This is where I'm at right now...I'm probably running my EZ paces too fast and am stuck in a zone where it's too fast for EZ but not quite fast enough for a true tempo/threshold pace and I'm not getting that much faster even after 3 mos. of training (2/6 to today).

It depends. My high school coaches didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care either.

I did a lot of research on how to get better, and by Junior year, I was improving a lot more during the off-season when my coaches didn’t have jurisdiction over my training.

I’ve been basically only training myself since March 2020. And have taken my 3200 from 11:15 to 9:31, my 800m from 2:06 to 1:55, and my 400m from 55.5 to 51.

I’m now in a place where I once again need training partners and competent coaches to push me to improve more, so I will be joining up with a program later this summer and no longer running unattached.

bimbap: That is great, that you beat all your old HS prs! I see what you are saying about a GOOD coach, but some of us don't really have that great of a coach. My coaches are great people, with good intentions, but their training (I feel like) is super low mileage (30-35 mpw). Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people addicted to the mpw at the end of the day, but I just feel like we aren't getting the full benefits for cross country season. So, a good coach I can understand. My coach is just okay, though.

CopperRunner: That sounds like what I have in mind, but I don't know if I would ever get that fast! Those are some impressive times! What was sort of a staple workouts you did for the 800m, if I may ask? (800 is my favorite event)

Here is my plan for the first 2 weeks of Summer Training for next year (off season preceding XC):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kw2SKDoEE-sdc0CAJdgd3qSgKMEoJsRilOSL8thbwqQ/edit?usp=sharing

I have only included the first 2 weeks because I will re-assess after the 5 kilometres time trial.

Monday's workout is MP or aerobic tempo type of pace, and Wednesday is VO2max paced intervals. I have not yet included Threshold paced workouts, perhaps I should replace Wednesday with those? I have the feeling VO2max is more geared towards the latter portion of the season.

The * means 2 mile warmup/cooldown at no particular pace

The + means 4x100 meter strides, full recovery following the workout

I wanted to add, this is based off of a shape of 5:28 mile pace, if necessary I can re-do the paces (like if I get in worse shape after track season).

I trained myself in high school before I ever went out for track.

I just did a bunch of sprints and drills to try and become a sprinter.

I eventually specialized in the 400 and then the 800 in college and then the 1500.

I spent one full year training myself for the 1500 after college before going back to a coach.

I merely looked at my logs for the previous year and did a similar schedule.

ElGuerroujFan (phone) wrote:

I am curious about when I should be experienced enough to train myself effectively (without consultation of training theory/sources)?

Of course you can train yourself if you consult training theory and other sources.

A good coach probably get you to your goals faster.

But what do I know, I was never coached and ran of myself for decades.

Two options:

1. Ask your coach to write you a training program for the summer.

2. Just keep it simple... build mileage, run mostly easy with a weekly tempo run and a long run each week. Run slower on the days after your workout and if you are feeling fatigued. Run faster but still easy on days that you are feeling good... Work in some strides and hill sprints 1 or 2 times a week.

You don't need to coming into XC season at your peak fitness, you'll have the whole season to tune fitness.

Hit these paces/duration during training. You can run less than the suggested times. This is for mere mortals. Elites adjust accordingly.

All out sprint(standing or flying start)- 8 seconds

400m pace- 30 seconds

800m pace-60 seconds

1500m pace- 90 seconds

3k pace- 3 minutes

5k pace- 5 minutes

10k pace- 10 minutes

Tempo pace- 30 minutes

1/2 marathon pace- 45 min

Marathon pace- 2 hour run with 2nd hour at marathon pace

My best marathon training cycle was when I wrote my own schedule based on some articles I read about Canova's approach to the marathon. My worst marathon training cycle was when I tried to do the same schedule when I should have been making major adjustments for age and limitations on training due to work/travel/family. Key to self coaching is having the ability to be objective about your current fitness and what kind of training load you can realistically handle. There are tons of great resources out there on different approaches to training that you can use to write your own plan. The real trick is to be honest with yourself and be able to modify you plan as necessary if you start having problems.

Coaching at the high school level is a mixed bag. Some coaches are very knowledgeable and can help maximize your potential and some are basically useless. It helps to have an objective individual review your training and provide feedback or nudge you to things like core work or weight training that you might not otherwise do. The larger, more successful programs whether at the high school or college level are likely to have a coaching staff that can really help get the best out of you particularly if they have a multi-year history of fielding strong cross country or distance teams. I've been running for 45 years now about 20 of these years at the competitive level and if I had a coach they would provide value by nudging me into doing things I'd rather avoid and making sure I don't do something totally stupid like exceeding the limits my body has in terms of mileage or intensity. Probably after racing / training for about 8 years having completed a few marathons and literally hundreds of track races from 400M up to 10K there was not an awful lot a coach was going to tell me about what specific workouts I needed to have the desired training impact

ummmmmmmm wrote:

Two options:

1. Ask your coach to write you a training program for the summer.

2. Just keep it simple... build mileage, run mostly easy with a weekly tempo run and a long run each week. Run slower on the days after your workout and if you are feeling fatigued. Run faster but still easy on days that you are feeling good... Work in some strides and hill sprints 1 or 2 times a week.

You don't need to coming into XC season at your peak fitness, you'll have the whole season to tune fitness.

This is the way to go, dude! Also, didn't you just recently say you have a stress fracture?

And, hey man, lay off the TTs during summer base training. Just keep it consistent with the tempo sessions - mix it up between:

- steady efforts starting at 12' and increasing by 1' per week up to 20', "comfortably hard" and just a bit slower than your 5K effort (EFFORT, dude, not PR pace)

- 3 x mile repeats with 2 min jog

- 6 x 800m repeats with 1 min jog

Actually, egf, you'd probably benefit more if you just did the steady tempo as I described above, and alternate it weekly with 12 x 1/4-mile hills with jogback recovery. Smooth and steady 5K effort.

That's it, man. Easy mileage, weekly long run, midweek tempo run or 12 x approx 400m hills, strides twice a week. It will take a couple of years to build your aerobic engine, if you hammer it now it ain't gonna help.

And heal that stress fracture dude! Bike and pool. And long vigorous walking.

All right. Enough of my windbaggery

It's quite interesting and quite risky. However, I think it's worth doing anyway.