How Being a Stupid Runner Made Me a Better Running Coach

When I was in high school, I often raced workouts and some longer runs with my teammates. What were supposed to be easy or moderate efforts turned into all-out endeavors as we tried to drop and break each other in practice to show who was boss. They were normal periods of youthful impulsiveness and competition between 16-year-olds, but there were countless races I ran on tired and overtrained legs because of this.

In ninth grade, when I was 15, my goal was to break five minutes in the mile. I failed six times, running very close times like 5:03, until the final race of the season, where I ran 4:59:94. After horrible races, I was very hard on myself. I would get home, and in a fit of self-directed rage after bombing a mile race earlier in the day, force myself to do hill repeats. My coach and teammates told me to calm down and that it wasn’t smart and would not make me a better runner. But I was pissed, and my failure was all I could think about for the rest of the day. In my mind, the reason I didn’t run fast was that I didn’t work hard enough.

Compared to running, I did well in school. In fact, school had an easy formula: study more. But I did not always get better at running by doing it more or harder. Sometimes I would try hard just to get worse.

Over the years, I have done tons of other stupid things. I ran the reps too hard. During interval workouts, I would often blast the last rep and go much faster than I should have.

Besides training, there were mistakes I made in races. I went out too fast, and I did that too often. I made sudden surges in the middle of races that zapped my energy for the finish.

I have been a runner for almost 17 years now. I have made a ton of mistakes and also been stubborn in making the same mistakes over and over. It took me a long time to learn that during interval workouts, it was better to run the same pace and control the effort rather than blast the last rep and go super hard. It took me a long time to learn how to maintain a sustainable, steady effort in a long-distance race to keep energy for the finish.

Eventually, I learned, and how I approach the sport now as a 2:34 marathon runner is much more sustainable and healthier than as a runner in high school.

Now, I coach several of my friends who are new runners. It is going very well, and I think a lot of it is because of the beginner effect — they are improving every time they race. They run personal records (PRs) of over a minute each time they run.

One person ran a 20-minute half-marathon personal best. As much as I would like to attribute that to my masterful training, the beginner effect is likely a much bigger part of it. I caution my friends not to get used to running personal bests of minutes every race, because after they get into the 17-minute range for the 5k, there are periods of plateaus.

My training plans for my friends’ half-marathon goals usually include weekly mileage, a workout, and a long run. I don’t watch them run since I live hundreds of miles away, and I can’t give any feedback on biomechanics and whether these friends are over-striding or have issues with their arm swing. Thus, my “coaching” is very hands-off.

Regardless, they usually follow the plan and do their best to hit the workout. They follow all my directions, and they have put in the work to run countless miles and workouts week after week, and have gotten in better shape. I am telling them they can run times in an upcoming half-marathon they could have only dreamed of five months ago.

There are principles that undergird any big aerobic efforts, like the marathon and the half-marathon. The biggest thing I learned for myself is the importance of long-term consistency in training. I learned the importance of a consistent week over a particularly intense week. Of course, some weeks are consistent and intense.

As an example, I don’t give my friends 50-mile weeks and then 10-mile weeks. I have had some weeks pan out this way from a lifestyle perspective, but I usually give them gradual ramp-ups followed by down weeks. I give these friends weeks of 15, then 17, then 20, 23, 26, 30-mile weeks. It’s a gradual ramp-up, and it’s usually a range, too, to account for flexibility and life and professional obligations.

At times, we have had to recalibrate the training to account for injuries, illness, and general fatigue. I periodize the training with stages for speed, threshold training, and longer training sessions at half-marathon pace. The long runs are sometimes just easy, and sometimes the second workout of the week with pickups in the middle of the run.

As a runner, I have learned through baptism by fire and trial and error. I have had several great coaches throughout my running career. I have run with very talented, smart runners. And yet, it has taken failure after failure, mistake after mistake, to internalize that certain training methods or racing tactics were mistakes, that the boring, high-volume week after high-volume week was the key to improvement.

I think my friends see that I run a 2:34 marathon, and they think I am at another level of being a runner that they would want to get to. I run a 2:34 marathon and think, “Ehh, that’s okay. I think I can do a lot better.” When I was 21, if I ran a 2:34 marathon, I would have thought, “That sucks. Why can’t I run 2:30?” But this trial and error has given me insight into the difference between being a coach and a runner.

And there are still times I fail to apply the same principles and philosophies I have coaching my friends to my running. There are still times I run an extra rep of a workout and don’t need to. There are times I go on adventures to run almost 30 or more miles. There are times I go harder than I ideally should, or engage in a bit too much pace-pushing when running with a group of runners.

Being in the arena means having tunnel vision, being governed by impulses rather than logic. It sometimes means feeling rather than seeing, with emotions dominating over clarity. It has been so much harder to apply these rational coaching principles to myself than I can with my new running friends.

Coaching my friends means more cold logic with some flexibility. It means being very strategic and seeing everything from a more metabolic perspective. I like to think I also help keep them positive and give them perspective on tough training weeks or tough races, and our shared group chat serves as a positive accountability mechanism.

Beyond the technical aspects of running, there is one thing I did right all this time that I think I have imparted well on my friends. As a runner, I always gave a lot of effort. I always had a lot of passion for bettering myself and for the sport. And at the end of the day, I always bounced back from bad days to try again.

I am at a very early stage of coaching. I don’t charge anything, and I’m happy to do it for free to stay in touch. It’s a lot more fun to give back the 17 years of experience and knowledge than to keep going at this alone. Above all, I like to be the voice of reason and clarity when I act too impulsively and am too critical.

I’m genuinely as excited for the success of my friends as I am for my own. It’s just running at the end of the day, but for my friends, it’s always healthy and always fun, unlike what it was sometimes for my younger self.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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