Make Love To The Measure

Have A Coach In Your Corner

I am a big believer in coaches and coaching, I myself am a coach, but I don’t have a coach.

My job(s), where I live, my goals, they are all very different and nuanced and constantly changing. It would be a lot to ask off any coach to be responsible for pulling all this together into a coherent plan. Also, I have been running for 25+ years, so I should have some idea about what I’m doing.

After Wrexham Marathon, I decided to keep my focus trained on road races, with the aim to run London Marathon in October. So with mountain races out, this period, between marathon build ups, is a bit tricky, empty. Even if you don’t have a coach, it is always good to have someone in your corner, who knows their shit, and you can ask for advice when you need it. Ken Pike is my guy in times like this. Has helped me with my running since I was 14 years old. Knows all my strengths and weaknesses. Never afraid to tell it like it is, you facking wanker. Stop messing around, get out and do the fast stuff. He set me a session of 6x400m (3min rest) to help break me out of my marathon pace rut.

I would usually do this on a Thursday, but due to coaching commitments, Wednesday is a lot easier for me to get to the track. This is only a day after my main Track Tuesday session, so I was feeling pretty flat. There was a lot of traffic, I had limited time, so my warm up was a one hour drive then a 100m jog from the car to the start line. The first rep was not pretty.

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Make Love To The Measure

Find something you can measure yourself by, that will take your body and mind out of your comfort zone.

My squad at Track Tuesday Treborth run El Classico session once every 4-6 weeks. The session is simple, it is short and fast enough to require anaerobic work, but long enough to require aerobic and mental strength. I’ve been doing this session for ten years (introduced to me by Ken). I can remember by best ever performance, and my worst.

Every 4-6 weeks is optimal. A weekly test like parkrun does not give enough time for adequate rest and improvement. But leave it too long, and it is hard to stay focused and engaged.

The world is distracted, and becoming increasingly more so. It is hard to decipher real news from fake. Find a measure that is never going to lie to you. Don’t measure by Strava or GPS, measure on something real. Testing yourself frequently in this way keeps you humble and hungry. That hurt. I have weaknesses. How could I do better?

If you know it’s coming, it prevents you from ever falling too far. It is sometimes a daunting, scary feeling, toeing the line and putting it out there, finding out how you measure up. But sometimes you need to be told straight. If it goes badly, embrace the disappointment, go away for a month, come back stronger.

Hard work keeps your body and mind calloused and ready. Make love to the measure. Embrace it, hold it tight, and it will keep you fit and healthy for decades at a time.

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If It Ain’t Broke… Don’t Throw Bricks

It was very nice seeing family and friends in Dulwich park, but I was very disappointed with my parkrun. Was hoping for 20-30 seconds faster. I got mad and wanted to just tear everything up and start again. I felt a need for action, to do something radically different; train harder, faster, longer, whilst throwing bricks.

When the dust settled and I had time to think about it, there were lots of reasons why I didn’t run 20-30sec faster. My body always feels groggy after the long drive from Wales. I didn’t listen to my body, I went out too fast and died. I had upped my mileage for the week. I had also had a few cold Leffes the night before. This was not the time to panic. Looking at the plan for next week, the Tuesday session of 16x400m is exactly the kind of session I would choose to do to improve my 5k pace. Sometimes there is no need to tinker and change things just because of one bad performance. You can make things worse. The harder thing to do, is to stay patient and stick to the schedule.

You had a bad one. You’re human. If it’s a good plan. Stick to the plan.

If the next parkrun doesn’t go well though, I’m totally going to start throwing some bricks.

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RUNNING RELATED HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH:

Excited to finally share this with you!

It's the deepest public conversation I've had. Thanks @richroll!

We cover everything:
-Whistleblowing
-Being a failed phenom
-All I've learned about the psychology of performance & developing resilience:https://t.co/xRe8fxrpiG pic.twitter.com/e7MGeMvJUx

— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) June 13, 2022

Excellent coach and author Steve Magness goes into detail, for the first time, about whistleblowing against Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project. Athletes included Galen Rupp and a certain Mo Farah (you can read more about Farah & Salazar here ). Fascinating stuff.

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NON-RUNNING RELATED HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH:

Brilliant day out scrambling with James. Although we both agree ‘scrambling’ is too tame a word. Perfect weather, excellent leading from James, cold pint. It’s an invigorating way to get out in the mountains when I’m not running in them so much.

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