A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a really nice guy living on the outskirts of Melbourne. He was looking for a running coach to help him with his running. We were talking about his goals and training over email and with his permission, I have given you part of the actual email correspondence that we had. Check out his confusion….
"That's one of my problems at the moment, goals! SO MANY OF THEM! So my own training is in disarray. I don't know whether to knock back and hit a 5-6 month patch of Maffetone running. Then there's Matt Fitzgerald banging on about 80/20 running! But on the other hand, we all want to go fast...and I KNOW i'm capable of going sub 3:30 over 42.2 and would LOVE to have a crack at a BQ, but for me thats a 3hr 05 marathon, which, well, yeah, I can't see that happening. Basically, I think I've read way too much and now I have all these ideas in my head, but have no idea what's best for me."
WOW! That’s a lot of goals, a lot of different methods and a lot of confusion to deal with. Trust me, I can really sympathise with this. It was not so long ago that my head was in this exact space. It is a complete nightmare. You don’t know where to turn, who to believe, what method or technique to try, what magazine or blog to read, what race to sign up to. It sucks! The sad thing is that this thought process is actually pretty normal amongst runners and is not exclusive to beginner runners at all.
So where does our confusion stem from?