If you already have a coach, is there really any benefit to reading training books? Whenever I've started reading them it seems like it just makes me not have as much faith in my coach's training. Should I just ignore them until I no longer have a coach (post-college running) and then look into them? Or is there still stuff I can use from them?
If you are worried that reading books on training might erode your faith in your coach, you REALLY ought to stay away from the LRC message board.
tjmcm wrote:
If you are worried that reading books on training might erode your faith in your coach, you REALLY ought to stay away from the LRC message board.
I've been reading these boards for about a year... and I've read some training books before(DRF and Better Training for Distance Runners). However, I read those awhile ago and seem to think that maybe just having faith in my coach's program is the best way to go? It's not like it's a terrible program anyway, but I feel like it could be improved. Maybe I should talk to my coach and see if he likes any of my ideas.
If you are reading about things that you really think will improve your running, talk to your coach about "personalizing" the program, NOT "improving" it. No coach wants to hear some wise-ass try to correct him (even if he is right!). To be honest, your coach has (probably) read all of the books you have, plus he's got the experience in real life. It is one thing to read about some workout or approach to coaching in a book, but it is very much another to implement it in the real world of modern racing. For example, most training books call for 2 6-month training cycles, and thus 2 peaks. But in college today, you have an indoor season to deal with. How do you adjust to that? That's something only experience can teach. There's dozens of other examples of things like that which can't be taught in a book.
What a good coach does is start out with a general approach to training, and then personalize it to each of his athletes to provide them (and thus, the team) with the greatest possibility for improvement.
I think the first step is to properly analyse the current training: Using the knowledge from reading to really understand how the current training works.
This might include additional evaluation (sRPE comes to my mind, for example) and should lead to an athlete-personality who participates in all aspects of training.
RIght now it reada a bit like "I am on the receiving end of trainng planning and I want to move up". There are many gradual steps.
Another approach: There are so many facets of running that one could tamper with. Why not "reading ahead" on nutrition? Or running style? Or supplemental/core/.. training?
Not necessarily one has to start "messing about with the workouts".
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