If you have hit a plateau? You may need to revamp your training.

Why did you run a personal best every marathon the first 10 years of my career?

YES I said 10 years- it takes a long time to develop your aerobic engine while hardening your running bones and tissues to the progressive load?

Aerobic Conditioning - running and building mileage healthily and progressively over years and years it STEP ONE-it is low hanging fruit.: All that mitochondria and dense capillaries and musculoskeletal load- oh my!

Yes, I do believe some runners respond better to mileage or some to intensity but really, most marathon runners are slow twitch vs. fast twitch, and I have seen it over and over again- runners PR a lot at the start of their career then, hit a point where they get stuck and even injured without diversity in their training: strength, mobility, and race specific training. They look back and hold tight to the fact that that mileage was what improved their performance- Well YES. YES it did. And then…..

So you say, I do really good on high mileage- yep - you do- until you hit your capacity at some point. Then, you're gonna need to do something different- ask any elite marathoner- especially us runners who weren't naturally the best- the group that did everything we could to run that Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying Time. Ask any of them.

Yes, most marathoners (including myself) are slow twitch.

AND, we respond to miles, BUT at some point!!!!

If you think you can run a fast marathon by running a lot of miles that NEVER hit your marathon pace- cry a tear but you aren't gonna race 26.2 at that pace! That is hard! ha! And you have to listen to a coach! Stop making excuses and Listen.

At some point, you will hit a plateau just running aerobic miles considering your lifestyle and recovery rate opportunities.

So, you wonder? Why am I continually running 3:10?

Cause you maxed out ONE system within your lifestyle allowance of accumulative miles and now (you have other systems that we could play with- how fun!!)

For a faster half or full marathon, you have to strategically add race specific workouts (LT- long grinding shit- not hard as heck but ewww slow burn!)- meaning more stress meaning you have to let go of the old way of training to allow for more energy and load to the specific workouts.

This can only be done through communicating your log with the coach, honesty and common sense.

I know this because I went through this a couple times through my long career- Im still going!-

AND I also made the silly mistake of running all the miles while running the intensity without climbing slowly- I concentrated on what "I should do" instead of communicating with my coach how my body was recovering within the reality of my lifestyle (I move all day long-ha!)

Mistakes are common. I feel so sad when I witness an athlete who feels "devastated", "crushed'' that they can't hit a workout that the coach gave- instead of saying- wow, that was hard- I have work to do! or "I must not have recovered enough before this hard session", or "ok, yah I didn't hit my times, but I pushed through on tired legs which might be the stimulus coach wants so you are ready for the later miles of racing the marathon.

My coach was AMAZING- we missed my goal 6 times before achieving it. We got injured. We won and got lots of records. This is the peaks and troughs of the beautiful sport of marathon running.

Coach is not God, he couldn't know what I was doing every minute of the day outside of running (sleep, nutrition, relationship stress, or whatever).

To succeed, stop taking everything so seriously - yes it's serious to you- I KNOW- but tying so much identity and self worth to an arbitrary number or one instance or time is a sure way to burn up and lose the joy and feistiness of our sport. Relax, get fierce, get uncomfortable. Embrace the "season you are in'' not what the latest strava or instagram post/athlete is in.

Allow your motivation to come from within. Relying on social posts, your friends goals, or fear it gets you going will not bring you big picture success.

Listen to me: It's time to play the long game.

Love Coach