I want to tell you about a runner I coached.
She originally heard me on someone else’s podcast and reached out. She was already an incredibly good runner and she’d been working with someone else, but she’d ended up with a stress fracture, partially as a result of what I’d classify as “too much volume.”
She’s incredibly disciplined and was putting in the miles exactly as she was programmed, yet she still got hurt.
Now, if I’m being honest, things happen. Sometimes you learn that the method was wrong by running into a brick wall. But still… I had a feeling we could do better.
First, we let the medical side run its course. I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on the internet. We didn’t do anything before she got cleared by her doctor.
Then, instead of rushing headlong back into 100+-mile weeks, we focused on strength while following a reasonable return-to-run program.
Now I know what you’re thinking, and no, the program didn’t take months. It took less than three weeks because everything went incredibly smoothly.
While doing that, we also started to build a foundation of heavy strength training so we could really start to put some load into her bones and connective tissues.
Then, after everything was feeling safe, we started to add speed work designed not just around her goals, but her body as well (she’s an incredibly gifted slow-twitch athlete who wanted to run a fast marathon, so we focused her speed work around a bunch of lactate threshold work).
Just a few months after we started working together, she ran a sub-90 half marathon. Later the same year, she BQ’d. Solidly. At Boston.
As I said, she was already a good runner and nothing we did was particularly groundbreaking. Most training isn’t. It’s just about putting the fundamentals together in the right combination.
And for her, that meant building a program that kept her safe, made her stronger, and built on areas where she already excelled.
That’s the whole point of the workshop. If you’re a runner who’s tired of breaking down and you want to see this work for you, I’m walking through the entire system on August 19th.