25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
20. TRAINING TO TRAIN COMES BEFORE TRAINING TO WIN.
This is perhaps the most important lesson for a coach to learn: Before athletes can train to win races, they must first train to handle the training itself!
Running culture has a problem right now. Athletes obsess over optimization long before they have earned the right to optimize anything. It's common to see amateurs using physiological testing, supplement stacks, carbon shoes, and double-threshold sessions long before they have built the ability to absorb meaningful training load consistently.
Elite performance is not built on heroic workouts and marginal gains. It's built on mastering the basics. Training to train means building resilience. It's the gradual development of frequency, volume, energy systems, and durability so the athlete can absorb meaningful work repeatedly.
Training to train also means patiently building routines, recovery skills, and emotional control, and managing the stress of daily life. Without this foundation, advanced training becomes little more than performance cosplay. Your training might appear 'elite', but there’s nothing underneath to support it and burnout is inevitable.
Many coaches confuse complexity with seriousness. They prescribe elite training protocols and race-specific blocks before the athlete has mastered ordinary weeks – before they have developed the basic capacity to train consistently without breaking down. And aiming for optimization before adaptation creates fragile athletes.
Endurance development is architectural: the body must first become structurally and metabolically capable of handling stress before higher-intensity work has any lasting meaning. A fragile athlete cannot express fitness consistently because consistency itself is the foundation of fitness.
Durability is not glamorous, but it is decisive. Showing up healthy, well rested, emotionally steady, and capable of repeating unremarkable, solid work for weeks and years on end matters more than occasional heroic workouts followed by collapse!
@ellencheets training in the Lakes for the @ultratrailsnowdonia 80km, where she finished a 2nd in 9hrs 41mins.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
19. THE RECOVERY PARADOX
Those who need recovery the most are very often the least likely to prioritize it. When training is very stressful, recovery becomes both more essential and more elusive. That's the paradox!
Elite athletes tend to be driven and willing to push to extremes. They equate more work with better results. But that's a dangerous misconception because it ignores one critical element: structured recovery.
Performance isn't linear - it's cyclical. You push, then you recover and adapt. Skip the recovery phase, the adaptation stops. Without recovery, all your hard work becomes a series of false starts.
I've coached 'quick recoverers' who bounce back rapidly from hard training. They implement recovery strategies religiously and are ready for the next challenge quickly. Their training is consistent, unremarkable, and sustainable.
I've coached 'slow recoverers' who neglect recovery, squeeze in extra races or workouts, need more time to return to baseline performance, and only rest when injured. Their training involves sporadic bursts of overwork and routinely pushing through fatigue!
Effective recovery is governed by The Three Rs:
1️⃣ REST. Actively step away from training. Go for a walk. Connect with friends. Practice mindfulness. Read books. Reduce the time spent staring at screens or listening to podcasts - it's all noise and no substance; it keeps your mind occupied but creates anxiety.
2️⃣ RESET. Change your thinking about stress. The key isn’t eliminating stress but managing it wisely. We build resilience through self-reflection. Keep a journal and write down what’s going well and what's stressing you out. Face setbacks, learn from them, and give yourself room to reset.
3️⃣ ROUTINE. Think of recovery as the key to progress, not wasted time. Plan it. Embrace it. Build a solid recovery plan. Stick to consistent meal schedules and sleep schedules. Own your mornings. Get to bed as early as your lifestyle allows. Train at the right intensity for your needs (a lot of sub LT1 or very easy running). To unwind, schedule breaks and digital boundaries and stick to them! No calls, emails or looking at devices.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
18. THE SUCCESS PARADOX.
Success is a well-documented source of happiness, ergo if current success brings happiness then shouldn’t the memory of that success provide some happiness as well?
Nope! No amount of success will ever fulfill you!
Running culture rewards suffering and relentless striving, and lionizes the most successful among us. More trophies, bigger incomes, higher status, more fans, never-ending praise.
Yet the finish line moves the moment we cross it. Winning feels meaningful in the moment, but fades quickly as the mind searches for the next objective.
Humans have evolved to keep striving. The neurochemical associated with wanting (dopamine) is more powerful than the one associated with liking (serotonin). That drive pushes towards great performances, but it also leaves us stuck in a life that revolves around the relentless pursuit of achievement and external recognition.
This is known as the ARRIVAL FALLACY. It's the belief that reaching a goal will bring lasting happiness, when in reality, it never does. After the emotional peak that accompanies a big race win is, there’s a big low. We're left feeling empty and trapped by the very success we've spent our lives chasing.
The most difficult task for a coach is teaching athletes to recognize the arrival fallacy. It's highlighting the dangers of anchoring our identity and self-worth entirely on performance, prestige, and the collection of accolades.
It's a hard lesson to learn. Life is not a canvas to fill. It's more like a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of. True satisfaction does not come from arriving, but from loving the process itself. The early morning miles. The rhythm of training. Continual growth. The gradual discovery of one’s limits. The camaraderie of teammates. The friends made along the way. Lifting others.
The way to give the sport your all without burning out or seeing your life becoming an endless, miserable, injurious competition is to savour the wins; grieve the defeats; and always come back to the work itself. The real challenge is not reaching the mountaintop; it is learning how to enjoy the climb.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
17. THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect refers to how bad we are at assessing our own competence. Following a small success or the acquisition of a little knowledge we grossly overestimate our abilities.
Why? Well, it's very easy to be unskilled and completely unaware of it!
You this effect everywhere in coaching. Novice coaches speak in absolutes. Every workout is revolutionary. Every opinion is definitive. They confuse conviction with competence.
On the other hand, expert coaches tend to underestimate their competence. It takes a great coach to be able to discern between what they know and what they don’t, and to admit that they often have no idea what they are doing! It's only by improving our skills that we come to recognize the limitations of our abilities.
Truly elite coaches tend to say things like, “I don't know”, “It depends,” and “I’m still learning.” The deeper they go, the more they appreciate complexity. Real expertise breeds humility.
Growth begins when ego loosens its grip. The best performers are not obsessed with looking smart - they are committed to getting better. They understand that confidence without reflection quickly becomes delusion.
Social media pours gasoline on the problem. A runner posts one breakthrough race and suddenly becomes a philosopher of training. But performance gains are not always evidence of superior discipline or intelligence. Sometimes they are simply the result of perfect conditions or improved technology.
The “super shoe” era is a perfect example. Many runners now believe they are faster because they train smarter, recover better, or possess some enlightened methodology. Maybe. But often the explanation is simpler: the shoes changed the game.
Humility matters because reality always collects its debt. The best athletes and coaches know that mastery is not certainty. Mastery is the willingness to keep saying, “I might be wrong.”
📷 @jungfraumarathon Apparel aficionados will note the Nike Radical AirFlow shirt. Made out of recycled plastic bottles, I first had the pleasure of racing in this revolutionary tech when I signed with Nike ACG in 2002!
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
16. STOP RESTARTING!
How many times have you changed goals, altered the training plan, tweaked the system, or switched coaches in the last 4 years? For elite athletes, the answer is usually: ZERO TIMES!
Elite athletes don’t rely on perfect planning. They stay consistent long enough for an imperfect plan to work. They know that training is repetitive, adaptation lags behind effort, progress is uneven, and that boredom is a sign they’re on the right track!
In distance running, the goal isn’t to feel good about your training. It’s to let training do its job. Consistency compounds if you give it time to work. But nothing compounds if you are always starting over! You'll simply lose your way.
After the initial motivation fades and results stall, you are left with the work: the same sessions, the same structure, the same routines. This is when athletes often introspect and start to drift. They let their standards slip. Skipping easy runs. Chasing constant validation. Following the latest social media or training trend.
It’s easier to blame your coach or your training plan than examine your work ethic or ask yourself if your expectations might be inflated. It's easier to rewrite the story than do the work. So you change coach or start a new plan. It feels powerful. It feels like action. But motivation is a spark - not the engine. Emotion creates intention, not progress.
Restarting is avoidance dressed as optimization. Every restart keeps you where you are because it interrupts accumulation. By changing direction, you erase momentum.
We overrate the decision to commit and underrate what comes after. Most days (and some years) won’t feel like progress. But in reality, distance running isn’t built on clarity, it’s built on monotony. Progress comes from doing the same things well, for longer than feels comfortable. The athletes who go far are not the ones who constantly begin again. They’re the ones who learn how to stay on the path when the novelty fades.
📷 Athletes overestimate what they can do in 4 months & underestimate what they can do in 4 years. @fipascall went from zero to joining the @adidasterrex team in 4 years.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
15. CURIOSITY IS THE ANTIDOTE TO FEAR.
The work of neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp explains why some athletes freak out under stress while others endure.
Panksepp identified several core emotional systems in the brain. A SEEKING system, which drives curiosity and problem-solving, and a FEAR/PANIC system, which dominates under threat or high anxiety. You can’t be seeking and panicking simultaneously.
This is where performance lives or dies. When a runner encounters an unexpected crisis - early fatigue, muscle pain, nutrition issues, bad weather - the body tightens, the mind races. This is the FEAR/PANIC state in action, amplifying threat, narrowing attention, and suppressing curiosity.
It's therefore crucial for a coach to recognize this neurobiological reality. To understand that we do not rise to the level of our goals – we fall to the level of our systems.
And under stress, the system most practiced will win. A coach must help athletes navigate moments of crisis and practice the correct response. Teach them to move quickly from FEAR back to SEEKING. The internal dialogue changes: What’s actually happening? What can I adjust? Problems become puzzles.
Bad weather is the perfect proving ground. Wind, rain, and cold are reliable triggers for fear-based thinking. But they can also be invitations. Instead of “this is terrible!” the trained response becomes “what does this require?”
Adjust pace. Layer up. Refocus attention. Embracing bad weather isn’t toughness for its own sake - it’s a deliberate cognitive reframe that keeps the SEEKING system online.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. In the context of endurance, each moment of choosing curiosity over fear is a vote for adaptability, resilience, and control.
Things will go wrong in distance running. The athletes who endure aren’t the ones who avoid difficulty, but the ones who meet it differently. Fear narrows your world. Curiosity expands it.
🎥 Congratulations @carlamolinaro winning the @falsebay50 50km in 3:38 in very windy & wet conditions
📖 For more see link in bio: Psychological Tools for Navigating Discomfort in Ultras
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
14. THE 40% RULE (EXCELLENCE BEGINS BEFORE THE WORKOUT STARTS).
Runners are not robots!
Peak performance is not a mathematical equation. And yet we often behave as if performance were a programmable output:
Input intensity and miles ➡️ output excellence!
Runners do not like hearing this: the workouts are not as important as you think!
In reality, performance is a living system shaped by context, rhythm, and constraint. What appears on Strava or Training Peaks is merely the visible fraction of a vast, complex system. At best it represents only about 40% of what's required for peak performance.
The remaining 60% resides in the organisation of the simple and mundane details surrounding the workout. Yet these details impact heavily on readiness to perform, recovery, and adaptation:
✅Show up on time
✅Be ready for the work
✅Equipment ready
✅Nutrition ready
✅Route planned
✅Fuelling done
✅Understand the workout
✅Be prepared mentally
✅No last-minute improvisation
✅Recovery done
There is nothing glamorous or heroic here. But it’s the part many athletes fail to execute.
This understanding should lead us to rethink the role of a coach!
Coaching is not simply a matter of writing a training program and analysing metrics. The athlete is not a closed system. Athletes are porous, continuously influenced by work demands, emotional stress, and lifestyle variability. A well-designed workout given to an athlete with a poorly regulated lifestyle yields diminishing returns.
Conversely, when stress is managed and recovery optimized, the athlete will tolerate - and benefit from - greater training loads.
The paradox is clear: If you want to train harder, first get the basics of your life and recovery under control.
The plateau experienced by many athletes during major transitions in their lives illustrates this truth really well. As we get older, external structure dissolves and our responsibilities expand. That unseen 60% deteriorates. Stress accumulates, sleep fragments, diet changes, and consistency erodes. The athlete, still focused on volume and intensity, overlooks the deeper issues and their performance stagnates.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
13. RECOVERY IS TRAINING.
If there's one piece of advice I wish I'd taken more seriously when I was a pro runner it's this:
Rest with the same intensity at which you train.
Most elite East African athletes follow the same simple rhythm in training: 6 days of work, 1 full day of rest. Always. And “rest” means total rest. The shoes stay untouched. 12–14 hours of sleep straight. Eat constantly. Nothing else. There's no fear of feeling “lazy”.
This is how elite East African athletes handle 30-40km of running each day. It's not because they are superhuman, but because they are disciplined enough to stop. It's a running culture that places great importance on allowing the body to recover and absorb the load.
And here’s the paradox: those days of total rest are when the real growth occurs. When muscles repair, mitochondria multiply, hormones reset, and motivation returns. Recovery isn’t time lost. It’s the multiplier.
Most athletes in the West do the opposite and never feel the kind of rebound that “deep recovery” brings, simply because we don't see rest as training. We live and train in a kind of “grey zone”. We obsess over intensity. We train kind of hard, rest a little bit, and end up stuck in a state of low level fatigue. Even when we feel like there's nothing in the tank - legs dead, motivation low - we push through. By trying to force progress, we lose it.
What can we do about this?
1️⃣ Don’t wait until you crash. Schedule recovery the same way you schedule workouts.
2️⃣2 Find your rhythm. Maybe it’s 5 intense days and 2 lighter ones. Maybe it’s shorter daily resets. The key is making it intentional, not accidental.
3️⃣ instead of pushing for one more rep or one more email, respect 'stillness'. Sometimes the smartest move is Netflix on the couch, a walk without your phone, or an early night.
4️⃣ Change the question. Stop asking, “How much can I squeeze in?” Start asking, “How much can I actually absorb and grow from?”
5️⃣ Listen to signals. Low motivation, constant fatigue, poor sleep, and irritability are alarms telling you it’s time to step back.
🎥 @sabastiansawe Berlin 2025.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
12. SPECIFICITY & CHOICE (OR SACRIFICE).
One hard rule in distance running: train like you race - run at competition speed on race specific terrain. But not all the time, and not in every way.
Specificity is also about knowing exactly what your event demands, and having the courage to cut away the anything superfluous: the constant need to test yourself, the temptation to race too often, the habit of copying others, and the desire for novelty.
Specificity also means solitude.
In an ultra, you're often on your own for long segments of the race. So it makes sense to train alone, rehearsing race scenarios until they become automatic. In this way you learn to trust yourself without external pressure.
Specificity sounds simple, but it always comes with a price: sacrifice. Not the cliché version of sacrifice, but the practical one. Showing up for the same work, day after day after day means the sacrifice of variety and novelty. Sacrifice of comfort. Sacrifice of 'fun'. Sacrifice of 'social running'.
Sometimes the need for solitude causes us to question the very idea of being an ultra runner, but not while we're out in the mountains. Doubts usually appear off the trails. When it's time to train, commitment and execution are simple choices.
What looks like sacrifice from afar is actually the trade-off that makes performance possible.
Great runners live inside routines that seem boring, repetitive, and harsh in their simplicity. But they don’t see it as punishment, they see it as the path. Simplicity is often the hardest path because it removes all excuses. It forces you to face the work as it is.
And that’s where sacrifice shines in a good way, not as suffering for its own sake, but as the conscious trade-off of choosing one of life over another to serve a bigger goal.
I prefer to use the word “choice” instead of “sacrifice.” Sacrifice sounds like loss. Choice reminds us it is deliberate, we give up one thing to pursue another we value more - the joy of turning up to something you know you've worked hard for.
🎥 @_stevenmurphy_ training solo this winter for some big mountain ultras this summer.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
11. CONSISTENCY ALWAYS BEATS INTENSITY.
Developing great long distance runners from scratch requires plenty of volume (mostly easy), good intensity control, and investing time and belief in the athletes.
Many coaches are obsessed with high intensity training because it’s easy to see progress from workout to workout. They also try to use intensity as a shortcut because they have 'no time'. They think: 'More pain = more gain'.
But intensity is not a shortcut, and nor is it a multiplier. It's a tax. If you try to rush adaptation by using intensity too often, you lose it!
Too much high intensity work kills progress because it leaves no room for recovery and adaptation. It leads to stagnation, illness, injury, and burnout. Any intensity in training for long distances must be strictly controlled and kept between moderate and threshold effort.
Many athletes burn out simply because they train at intensities they cannot repeat consistently over the long-haul. They confuse 'hard training' with 'good training'. They go too fast on easy days, run at threshold when they should be running steady, run close to VO2max on threshold days, and compound it all by running 2-3 high intensity sessions each week.
They are constantly trying to 'prove their fitness' in every session. They aren't prepared to accept the fact that they may shine only a few times per year!
Good training is sustainable, structured, repeatable, nourishing, and boring. The real gains come from repeating the basics for years on end. One good block changes nothing. Five or ten good years changes everything.
Effective training is brutally simple but tough to master:
Train a lot, but very easy. It's almost impossible to go too easy on easy days!
Chase consistency, not superhero workouts. Endurance is a consistency game - nothing else.
Discipline in intensity protects your future. Avoid going too hard on any session. Always leave one or two reps in the tank.
After a workout, you are supposed to feel good enough to train tomorrow.
More pain ≠ more gain.
🎥 @runningwithemi 2nd at @penyagolosatrails (107km/+5600m) in 14:07 after a very consistent training block.
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
10. CONSTRAINTS.
There is no best training method.
And just because there's no scientific intervention study showing that a certain training method is superior to another training method, that's not to say it isn't beneficial!
This is a great photo. Not just because of the husky, Nova, and I know how much these dogs love running; but because it is also an excellent example of how I've come to think about training.
What is training with your dog useful for?
I don't have a physiological explanation. However, there is a functional one.
The only way to improve our repertoire of possibilities for performance is by exposing ourselves to difficult situations that force us to explore new solutions or to break with previous patterns in order to learn better ones.
Josh is currently training for the @ultratrailsnowdonia 100 miler.
A big part of preparing for an extreme mountain ultra is to deliberately impose constraints in training that force us to develop new and more effective strategies to perform at a high level in the mountains. Constraints provide the opportunity to improve our adaptive capacity - our ability to cope physically and psychologically with the onset of fatigue and with the unexpected events that often occur during an ultra.
Examples of constraints in ultra running include: terrain, gear/pack weight, route navigation, intensity, hydration, nutrition, altitude, temperature, weather conditions, darkness, and other runners.
In the photo Josh is training with constraints. The dog is a constraint!
She's a limiting factor that forces Josh to seek new possibilities in terms of running technique in order to move quickly over difficult terrain. Running with a dog has likely made Josh a more efficient and technically skilled runner on flat terrain and downhills, because it's forced him to explore a new way of running.
Of course, there are no scientific studies showing that running with a dog on a leash improves performance compared to a control. But that doesn't mean that it's not a highly effective way to train!
📷 @katrina_b_media / @ukcanitrail@joshydoc & Nova ran the 50km/+1400m course in 4hrs 40 mins!
25 LESSONS OF 25 YEARS IN COACHING.
9. POTENTIAL MATTERS MORE THAN TALENT.
We talk a lot about 'potential' in distance running, yet it's misunderstood. We confuse potential with talent. Or with how someone is performing right now.
Performance is easy to measure and talent is easy to spot. Conversely, potential is not defined by what's immediately observable - it doesn't announce itself and is easily missed.
Potential reveals itself through behavior under stress. Potential is how you behave when your motivation is low, conditions are not to your liking, your results are poor, and your progress is slow.
All athletes work hard when things are going well. Few athletes stay disciplined when nothing seems to be working. Yet it's only in adversity that your potential (not your talent) becomes the decisive factor.
This is why the 'talented' athlete who has early success is not always the one who lasts; and it's why the athlete who improves slowly will build a solid foundation and succeed over the long-haul.
So rather than judging an athlete purely on talent, a good coach observes their behavior - how they respond to discomfort, handle failure, react to mistakes, and use the guidance they're given.
Behavior depends upon the CHARACTER of the athlete. Character is not something you “are”, it's something you acquire throughout life. It’s something you develop through repeated practice. Character traits such as discipline, curiosity, and resilience are far stronger indicators of long-term growth than an athletes' talent!
Do you keep working hard when no one is watching? Do you stay curious when your ego is challenged? Do you view advice as an opportunity to improve? Do you put yourself in situations where you might fail? After making mistakes do you bounce back quickly and ask what can I do better next time? That's character.
Character matters more than most coaches think. Most athletes don’t lack potential - they simply lack what's known as a 'growth mindset'. They lack patience, character, and the behavior that allows potential to emerge. And these are problems the coach must solve.
🎥 @stephmccall having fun in the @totalsportstwooceansmarathon
