Tuesday, May 19, 2026 – Smarter, not harder

Hey Gang!

Happy Summer!!! As usual, we jumped right over spring and went straight into summer. I’ll take it. I’m sure we’ll still have some cold and rainier days – but so far I’ve abided by my vow not to complain about the heat ever! Even though I did a track workout in 28C! I embraced every sweat droplet. I could go without midges in every orifice, but seriously, not being cold is such a joy. So let’s enjoy it!

Lately I’ve been thinking about training smarter. I know we’ve heard it before: train smarter, not harder. But what does that mean? I think it means trying to understand our training, and what results we’re expecting from different efforts, and how to maximize those. It’s not about throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. Because at a certain age and stage, we don’t have time for that. We have to know which pasta pieces are sticking and which aren’t, and only use the ones that are. No wasted pasta!

Jim Ryun was a phenom runner in high school in 1964. Well, he didn’t start out as one. He was a failed athlete in a number of sports when a coach took a look at him and said he could make him into a sub-4 minute miler which had never been done by a high schooler. The only problem was this coach was a swim coach. But neither of them knew any better, so Ryun set about following a brutal regime of double-day interval workouts with immense volume, such as 50 x 400m hard. And he had to run these on a swim time countdown, where the faster he ran, the more rest he got and vice versa. This was a very unconventional way to train, but the reason it worked was because Ryun was a 17 year old male and his system could bounce back from almost anything thrown at it. Ryan did break the 4-minute mile, and went on to set world records in the 1500, mile, and 800 in his first two years of college. 17-19 year old males are full of testosterone and growth hormone and are designed to bounce back and recover. I’ve heard it said that a lot of bad coaching can be hidden in high school male teams, because they will improve no matter what. Lots of pasta sticks. But by the time Ryun was 21, his body was rebelling against the training and he suffered from physical and mental burnout. He had been training very hard, but not necessarily very smart, and eventually that caught up to him.

Female runners tend to have a different trajectory than males, with later strength peaks in their mid-late 20’s. High school girls can’t afford to be as reckless as their male teammates because they don’t recover quite as quickly. But by their mid-twenties to thirties, most well trained women can handle doing a fair bit of mileage plus hard running session three times a week, and recover adequately from one to the next. I used to do this. And it worked. So it is hard, once you figure out a formula that brings success, to change it. But we change. I can’t get three quality sessions in anymore without starting to compromise my recovery from one or my performance in the next. Some weeks it’s only one good session. Here’s the thing though: if done correctly with enough recovery in and out of them, the sessions can be just as high quality as they always were. I just have to space them out further. That is training smarter. 51 year old women and 17 year old boys have to approach things wildly differently. And to pretend we don’t is just willful blindness. The question in our training shouldn’t be: how much can I pack in. It should be: what are my key sessions, what is the purpose, and how can I maximize what I get out of each one. And the answer will change depending on travel schedules, sleep, stress, nutrition, etc… If it doesn’t, and you’re just checking boxes, you’re training hard, but not smart. And that is more likely to lead to injury than to your goal. (unless you’re a 17 year old boy who happens to be reading this, in which case, do whatever you want and enjoy it for the next 5 or so years – then we can talk).

On to tomorrow’s workout! Lakeshore and Leslie – 6:05 Drills, 6:15 GO!

Let’s do aerobic 300’s. That means lots of 300’s (like 10-14 of them) with 1 minute rest. Pace: starting around 5K and working down if feeling good. This is a good way to find a faster rhythm without losing form or straining too much. And the relatively short rest will prevent us from going too fast.

Should be fun!

That is all – see you in the am!

Seanna