My coaching philosophies have long centered around individualized approaches for success, even within team environments.

I think you need to recognize what an individual has going on in their life, and not only who they are within their sport, but who they are outside of their sport.

For an endurance sport this becomes even more imperative, as training can only properly happen with proper recovery. That means training can only properly happen with enough time to recover in an athlete’s schedule.

The majority of athletes I work with are parents with their own busy work and life commitments – outside of having kids with their own demanding schedules.

Finding a training schedule that works well within an athlete’s life is therefore one of the critical parts to the puzzle.

I’m always willing to help an athlete move days around depending on their life commitments, but even more in search of the best weekly schedule to develop a routine around.

If we can find the right routine that truly works for an athlete, training can accelerate. This is because the right schedule allows for recovery to accelerate.

This past summer I asked my own coach to shift my days of the week around. Saturdays would become Thursdays, Wednesdays would become Mondays and so on. That way, I could spend more time with my girlfriend on our weekends away from work.

The schedule didn’t help my sleep, but it did help to better prioritize my relationships – which are more important to me than running!

Similarly, I work with an athlete that follows a similar schedule of back to back long runs on Thursday-Friday. They want to spend time with their family on weekends, and they have more time during the week to nail their training and recovery.

Since moving to this schedule in consultation with the athlete, training has been more consistent, more pronounced, and more race-specific, since they have more time to travel to trails.

It’s a theoretically “unorthodox” schedule, but that shouldn’t matter. It’s what works best for the individual, and therefore is the best schedule.

This year, I’ve also experimented with some new theories around structuring back to back long runs.

How to stack consecutive long runs for older and injury-prone athletes.

The idea is that as opposed to the traditional norm of a long run followed by a shorter run in the “back to back long run” sequence, you reverse it. Muscle breakdown grows and recovery weakens as athletes age. So by scheduling the shorter run first, we’re better able to build fatigue resistance in a way that isn’t beating up an athlete’s body as much.

One of the more recent additions to my coaching roster is an athlete who is exceptionally active and loves the bike.

In their case, I’ve been able to compound fatigue resistance while diminishing muscle breakdown within the “back to back” by scheduling a longer bike ride, sandwiched in between the two long runs of the week.

We do a Friday long run, a Saturday long bike, and a Sunday long run. It acts almost like a rest day in between these two long runs – giving them time to recover, while still building leg strength and aerobic fitness.

For a different athlete, I’ll often do a triple of short run, short run, long run. Minimal muscle breakdown, while safely building volume and fatigue resistance.

I could do the same for the previous athlete, but it would be best to introduce that in time. They’re still relatively new to the sport, whereas they are really proficient on the bike. So, it makes sense to lean into that for now, and gradually build the number of days their running muscles can handle in a row over time. We can then more safely build volume as the athlete grows within training and racing.

I can remember EmKay Sullivan saying to me that she liked coaching for the “puzzle” of it all, and I think more coaches need to be treating the coaching process as more of a puzzle needing to be figured out at the individual level.

I’m sure we all have our favourite ways to train and our favourite schedules, but it has to work for the individual athlete.

Without that, the training would be mute, and the recovery would be lost.

Figuring out the best ways to make sure all the hard work pays off within training and recovery is one of my favourite things about coaching. So if that attention to detail sounds like a good fit for you, never hesitate to reach out!

Thanks for reading and see you soon!