I have joined Ruben Sanca's team at Lowellrunning.com. I have been doing a little online coaching and this will enable me to handle more athletes and to a full spectrum of plans from ready made to the full service online coaching I currently do as well as everything in between. Additionally Ruben has built up a whole system that from my end makes the work a lot easier and quicker, hence why I'll be able to handle more people, but also adds a lot of features and functionality for athletes. There is a news letter, a private facebook group, youtube page etc.. This is the sort of thing I have wanted to put together myself but never had the time or expertise to do.
For me I'm really excited for this because I have really enjoyed this kind of coaching in the past and I have enjoyed the little bit I have been able to do on my own the last couple years but I haven't wanted to go back to doing it with some of the other groups I worked for mostly because I couldn't handle the volume that they need from a coach. There are some great set ups for the full time athlete but for a fulltime teacher not so much. If you are interested in personal coaching, by me or any of the other coaches, you can go to the link below. I haven't created any of the pre-made schedules yet but I plan to steadily build up a library of those over the next year. I would like to create a series of summer schedules of all levels of high school and college athletes. Additionally I want to do schedules that are tied to all of the training systems that I discuss on here, Canova, Vigil, Aussie styles for many different race distances and levels. So if that sort of thing interests you keep checking in.
16 comments:
Hey Nate, were you able to get your sub 15 5K before the end of 2018?
Nope. I ran 15:46 in late October. I am in better shape now but not by much. I took a crack at it at a weekly series my club puts on on Dec. 29th. It was a bit of a shit show. I was sick and it was very windy. I ran about 4:50 effort into the wind for the first mile and was only at 5:13 and I was FINISHED. I only ran a 5:05 with the wind at my back and then crawled a 5:21 the last mile, small hill and the last 600m were into the wind again. Ended up around 16:20. It was ugly. I finally shook the cold and my workouts have improved a lot in the last couple of weeks but if I had to guess I could maybe run 15:15 to 15:20 right now and if I sharpened up I would be in the low 15's. So long way to go yet but at least the workouts are getting back into the normal range. I did a Moneghetti fartlek on my normal loop about a week ago and ran 3.76 miles and my normal range is 3.75 to 3.9. Under that is awful and over that is exceptional so I'm back in range. Sadly this means both my 5 mile under 25' and my 5k under 15' streaks died this year. -Nate
Hi Nate,
Not sure if you still check this, but on the off chance that you do: I have a question... about your dog! There's a lot of advice about running with dogs online, but I get the impression that often the runners are on the slower end of the spectrum. I've never been close to your level, but I do train quite seriously (2:30 marathon). I've just bought a puppy. I was a regular blog reader when you were posting more and think I remember you running with a dog sometimes.
Do you have any advice on dogs and running? How young did you start? How regularly? How long? How fast? Etc.
I appreciate you may be too busy to reply to this (and may no longer read comments) but any advice would be awesome.
Hope you're running strong. Jack
Running seriously and your dog! First breed and individual disposition can matter. If it isn't a high energy dog it isn't going to run with someone like you for long. We purposly bought a very high energy breed, Brittany, so it would run. I also trained regularly with a sub 4 miler, Blake Boldon, whose dog ran upwards of ten miles with us, often at or under 6mins per mile at altitude. She was an Aussie. That said Eric Morse runs very regularly and pretty fast, low 16' 5k's with his westie which is just a crazy individual dog.
Starting out. Really you shouldn't run distance with a dog until around a year. We started with Uta at 6months but we took her to a vet hip specialist first who told us to start. Now starting out we would do run walks with her, running a few minutes and walking a few. Never letting her get tired. We built up from there.
Once you get going you really need to take care of their paws and be very aware of if there is something that could cause them issue, like salt on the roads or rough rocks on trail.
-Nate
Thanks for taking the time to reply! That's all good to know and very helpful. Jack
Nate,
I've heard you explain that a large reason for Canova marathon training is to maximize fat utilization at faster paces so you don't run out of glycogen during the race. Would you say it's best to trust the training and plan on no fuel during a marathon? It seems like even if you have some emergency fuel for the last few miles available just in case, then you'd need to practice fueling during long runs so you know you could digest it. But if you practice fueling during training, does that diminish your ability to use fat more efficiently during those training runs since you're not depleting? Thanks so much.
Joe
Joe,
As important as the 2nd half of your question is, does taking fuel during training impact how well the training works to improve your fat burning capability, I don't know for sure. My experience, personally and as a coach is that it does NOT impact it, but that is purely subjective.
I would say train with fuel, race with fuel, but train with a lot of specific work and specific extensive work. Now if you are really worried about it impacting training I would train taking water and then take a sports drink on race day but the change has some risk of causing issues.
Personally I didn't take much fuel, really any, during my marathons, I drank flat coke at 30 or 35km at Worlds. Pretty sure that was the only time I took something other than water. But I have no problem with hedging your bets with fuel. My issue is with people trying to bridge the whole gap with fueling. The math simply doesn't work.
Nate
Nate,
I've read your guide to marathon training, as well as your 10k training cycle post. Based on the ideas you've laid out, for someone targeting a HALF marathon, would you say the training should mostly look like 10k training, since glycogen depletions isn't a factor, or would you say it should be more of a blend of 10k/marathon training?
Thank you!!
Joe
Joe,
You are right that making it more like the 10km would make more sense. You don't need the glycogen work and you can get the aerobic work from less intense tempos. Now you also don't need the 10km specific work but some vo2max is good. I would focus my effort on aerobic tempo, lt work, critical velocity/cruise type intervals and fartleks and vo2max. Ideally with some long runs and medium long runs.
That is super generic but hopefully answers your question
Nate
Hi Nate,
went to your blog today after 10-15 years of reading your first running blog today.
You inspired me to run and after running and reading your posts about training, I went and ran for Scotland in cross country.
Keep well and many thanks, I work in Sports Medicine.
Allan
Thanks Allen!
Nate, one year later, your answer here and listening to you talk about this issue elsewhere, inspired me to start a podcast to explore this further. I'm interviewing academics, coaches, and elite runners, and I've gotten a variety of opinions around this issue so far. I would be very interested to get your response to my most recent interview (Dr. David Nieman) that hit hard on this subject. Although I've gotten some compelling arguments in certain directions, the beautiful thing about science is that it's always open to further examination and discussion, and I would especially love to hear more of your perspective on these questions.
So, would you be open to coming on the show to lay out your view of training for fat adaptation etc, and perhaps respond to anything from the Nieman interview? Link to the show is below.
Thanks so much for your transparency over the years and for all the time you take to engage the community.
https://linktr.ee/MarathonRunPod
Joe,
I will try to listen the podcast this week. I have a bit of work tonight and tomorrow but if I'm really on my game maybe tomorrow night or Tuesday. I'd be thrilled to go on your podcast I'm not sure how much I'll be able to add but perhaps listening to Nieman will jog something loose.
My email is nateruns@hotmail.com
Nate
Hear, hear Joe!
Of all the runners I've tried to glean valuable information from over the years, Nate has been the standout. Will check out your podcast!
Cam
Hi Nate! My daughter Hannah has been running Varsity XC for 3 years now. She can’t seem to break her PB 19:56 5k. Each season she plateaus at the same phase of the season. Should we hire a coach in this off season time? What is your advise? She is really scared she won’t break into the 18’s woth only her junior and senior years left. Any advise is appreciated.
Hiring a coach while being part of a team is a very difficult thing and it very rarely works out. Additionally there can be a lot of reasons to plateau in HS, particularly for girls. I think there are a handful of things that are within your daughters control that she can focus on while remaining a full member of her team and not building any friction and extra stress with in those relationships. Additionally I think these are far more likely to lead to success than highering a second coach.
1. look at your daughters total stress load. How much time and effort is going into school, a part time job etc. When I was in college we had a girl come in and run around 2:17 as a freshman. Then she switched to a double major. She was a great kid and a super hard worker he wouldn't except anything less than the best out of herself. She wouldn't reduce her training and she wouldn't just go for a B in a class. I don't think she broke 2:20 for the next 3 years and I saw her run some unbelievably bad races, like in the 2:40 range. After she finished the double major she stuck around for a masters degree and to use the season of eligability she had left from an injury. Now on a "normal" academic schedule she ran 2:15 while actually focusing on the steeplechase and running much better there.
2. Diet- This is going to be the opposite of what you think. Is she eating enough. At that age the quality of the food is even secondary but a lot of female athletes, no a lot of runners period, simply don't eat enough. You need fuel to recover and if you are eating a lot of salad you may at that age be resilent enough to not get hurt but you really don't have much of a chance of recovering enough from your workouts to improve.
3. AEROBIC SUMMER. High school training has generally improved in leaps and bounds over the last 25 years but they still race and workout too much. EVERY hs except one that I have ever see have a break throuh was after a summer of EASY miles. Do a set of strides each week but other than that go way easier than she thinks she should. You could have her go as fast as her MAF number hr wise but really I'd say try to keep it to about 140bpm and just run a lot. What is a lot? More than she has before. If she wants to do something in the school year adding a few easy miles here or there is a great way to continue that aerobic development and can make a world of difference. I improved more from my JR to SR year in HS than in the three years prior and all I added was about 20 to 25 miles more a week of easy running.
4. run the first mile of her races slower. Dollars to donuts she is rocking out at close to 6:00's and fighting a war from the gun. get out in 6:30 and work your way up. Every once in a bluemoon there is a course where this really is hard to exacute but frankly even then most athletes would be better off running like this. Thing for some kids going out 30s too fast for the first mile costs them 15 seconds for some it costs them a minute. She may be much closer to 19flat then she realizes.
Hope that helps.
Nate
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