08-28-2019, 05:13 AM
<p>Distance coaching has almost nothing to do with technique.</p><p>It's all about fitness monitoring, particularly VO2 capacity and fatigue,</p><p>and developing an individualized training program designed to bring</p><p>the athlete to peak final three weeks of each season.</p><p><br></p><p>Bodies are so ridiculously different that there is no one size fits two,</p><p>much less all, program.</p><p><br></p><p>And technique? It's whatever technique achieves the highest level</p><p>of endurance/speed at the least expenditure of effort.</p><p><br></p><p>But this is from a long-retired competitor. </p><p>We were heavily under the influence of Lydiard and Bowerman:</p><p>Three hard/four easy/one mega weekend run, strength in phase one,</p><p>endurance in phase two, speed in phase three and sharpening to major races.</p><p><br></p><p>But hell, we ran faster times then in the 5000 and up than they run today,</p><p>It took 40 years, as a perfect example, for someone to break Pre's Olympic Trial's record in the 5000. And Pre was a Lydiard/Bowerman guy.</p><p><br></p><p>So my guess is that the big change is in the far more sophisticated tools</p><p>for monitoring every aspect of the runner's current level of fitness/speed/fatigue.</p><p>Overtraining was the killer back then.</p><p>The new tools should help minimize that.</p><p>If this coach is good at using these skills and individualizing the program</p><p>for each of his runners, he should be fine. 90% of it is the runner,</p><p>and so much of the runner is just pure genetics.<br></p>