Ask Coach Caleb: How Should I Structure My Training Weeks to Maximize Running Fitness Gains?

When it comes to training effectively, running hard during workouts is the easy part. The trick is structuring your training weeks (and entire program) so that you have the right balance of hard work and adaptation/recovery. In my last post, I talked about the reasons why runners should vary their pacing from day to day. […]

Ask Coach Caleb: Why Should Runners Vary Pacing for Different Types of Workouts?

If you’ve ever had the chance to see how elite runners train, one thing that becomes apparent very quickly is how their approach to pace/effort is different from most amateur runners. Elite runners tend to run their workouts really hard when it’s called for, and they run really slow (relatively speaking) during warm-up and on […]

Marathon Training Update: April 14 to April 20

I’m going to keep this one short since this has been an eventful week on multiple fronts. My main goals for the week was to get in a solid mid-distance run during the week and a strong 20 mile run today – everything else was secondary. The plan at the outset was for it to […]

Marathon Training Update: April 1-7, Making Progress!

I feel like I things started to click a bit this week – ran 5 out of 7 days, got in three strong quality workouts, and the toe seems to be almost back to 100%. The biggest validation that my training is starting to pay off came on my long run this morning – 18 […]

Marathon Training Update: March 25-31, Do No Harm

“Listen to your body.” It’s one of those pieces of advice that every runner should heed. Unfortunately, it’s also advice that is all too often ignored. We runners can be rather stubborn when it comes to getting in our miles, especially when a race is looming, and the consequences of not listening when your body […]

Weekly Marathon Training Update: March 18-24

Last weekend I made a deal with myself. I’d get my training plan from my coach (who, by the way, just won the HAT 50K yesterday!), post it here on the blog, then update how things went the following weekend. The goal was to both keep myself honest with my training, and also to give […]

Spring Marathon Training: Keeping Myself Honest

I wrote a few weeks ago about how my training for my Spring marathon (VT City) has been pretty lousy. A combo of time constraints, awful weather, and a string of low-grade illnesses had whittled away at my motivation to log in the miles. After returning from vacation in Florida last Saturday, I finally managed […]

Mizuno Wave Ekiden Racing Flat Review by Coach Caleb

After becoming very popular in the Japanese market, Mizuno has introduced the Wave Ekiden, a neutral racing flat, to the US.  The name of the shoe is a reference to competitive relay racing in Japan, which is as much (or more) a part of the athletic zeitgeist there as collegiate cross country and track & […]