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MANY RUNNERS COULD BENEFIT from a coach. Most do not have one, nor have they had one. While some runners received coaching in high school and college, and others got a start in beginning running classes, perhaps 95 per cent or more of the runners in America train unguided. They run on their own, obtaining help where they can from friends, or attending pre-race clinics, or reading books and articles in running magazines. Elite runners often are no different. Even the best of them find that once they graduate from school, they are set adrift to compete as teamless individuals. They must take control of their own training. Some gravitate to clubs where they continue under the guidance of a coach. Others hire personal trainers. Many just flounder, not making the best of their running ability. Yet good coaches (and good coaching) can make good runners. Coaches can provide inspiration and information, analysis and applause, support and sympathy. They can design daily workouts and stand beside the track holding a stopwatch. While the availability of coaches for out-of-school athletes is, at best, spotty, more and more running clubs--including many member clubs of the Road Runners Club of America--have begun to provide coaching as one of the perks of membership, and the RRCA has established a program of Coaching Certification for Adult Distance Runners. ASSISTANCE FOR RUNNERS Mary Reed is among the 60 certified coaches the Atlanta Track Club makes available for its members. "When a runner has a coach," says Reed, "they can bounce ideas off each other. You get to be a smarter runner faster. You don't have to make all the mistakes; you can hear about them and avoid them." Bob Glover heads the New York Road Runners Club's coaching program. Along with his wife and exercise physiologist, Shelley Glover, he coaches 100 coaches. "The reasons people need a coach vary according to their experience," says Glover. "At the beginner level, people benefit from being enrolled in a fitness program, because they tend to do too much too soon. For a person making the transition into racing, a coach can encourage them. The faster a runner gets, the less need to push. At the elite level, runners have so much drive they don't need a coach pushing them, they need a coach holding them back." Jim Fischer has coached at the high school and college level for 30 years. Currently, he serves as coach for men's cross country and track and field at the University of Delaware. Once a week, Fischer welcomes adult runners to his track for interval workouts. He says: "I started my group, because a lot of adult runners, particularly women in their 30s, never had run competitively in school and never had trained on the track." On any given week, two dozen runners appear to run under Fischer's supervision. They range in abilities from 16:00 to 24:00 for the 5K. Fischer structures training more loosely than he does with his collegiate runners. "I go with the flow," he says. "I spend a lot of time asking people, `When's your next important race?'" Fischer charges no fee; he does his weekly sessions for fun, and as a challenge to expand his knowledge. It's probably unreasonable to expect free coaching advice, however. Ski instructors and golf pros charge for lessons. As demand for their services has increased, running coaches have begun to charge modest sums for their services. Compared to what participants in other sports pay for "lessons," runners get a bargain when they seek a coach. ONE-ON-ONE COACHING Two athletes supervised by Martin--Bob
Kempainen and Keith Brantly--finished second and fifth respectively
in the 1993 New York City Marathon and also competed in the 1996
Olympic Trials. Martin does most of his coaching by phone, seeing
his runners occasionally for testing and hands-on advice. That
works if you're an experienced runner working with a knowledgeable
coach. Most coach/athlete relationships probably involve the
coach and runner seeing each other at a workout session at least
once weekly, if not daily. The RRCA's Road Scholar® program,
begun in 1995, has raised over $98,000 and funded 24 post-collegiate
athletes who need financial help to train for road races. Some coaches work with school runners and advise out-of-school athletes as an add-on. An example is Pat Savage of Oak Park, Illinois, coach of the track and cross-country teams at Niles West High School and Oakton Community College. Savage also works with a group of adult runners, the Niles West/Oakton Runners Club, planning their training and supervising them at area road races. Other qualified coaches arrive at their trade from a different direction, outside the school systems. They translate their running experiences into information to be shared with new-time runners. It doesn't matter whether they are, or were, elite runners--or even runners at all. A good coach mainly needs to know what it takes to excel at running, at whatever level he or she coaches. An example is Bill Wenmark of Deephaven, Minnesota, a former ice hockey player who decided on a whim one year to run the Twin Cities Marathon, despite having trained for only a few weeks! Wenmark finished--barely. His muscles were so sore (he admitted afterwards) that he had to drive home in third gear, because he couldn't use the clutch pedal. Wenmark claims to have made every mistake in the book, but learned from his errors and now teaches one of the most successful beginning marathon programs in the U.S. Through his American Lung Association Running Club (ALARC), Wenmark has guided more than 3,000 first-timers to finishes at the Twin Cities and Grandma's Marathons. Between Savage and Wenmark, there are other coaches of adult runners with varying levels of experience and differing degrees of qualifications. Indeed, there is a danger for the adult runner seeking advice. Although USATF offers well-designed educational programs for track coaches seeking to improve their skills, the emphasis is more on sports science and individual track and field events rather than road racing. Only since 1998 has the RRCA begun to offer a certification program that defines who is qualified to coach road runners and who is not. GUARANTEEING COMPETENCE Diane Palmason of Blaine, WA, a coach of adult runners and a member of the RRCA coaching committee, sees a great need for determining who is qualified to coach. "Particularly this is true," says Palmason, "in the area of Wellness programs, teaching people healthy lifestyles and guiding them toward running as a simple and pleasurable means of achieving fitness. At the moment, this area is pretty well owned by various aerobics or fitness instructors--many of whom don't know nearly enough, perhaps because they lack personal experience with competitive running programs." The truth of the matter is that not everyone who claims to be a coach is qualified to serve in that capacity, and not everyone who is qualified may be the right person to offer advice to you! Do you need a push, or do you need to be pulled? Do you merely need motivation, or are you looking for a day-by-day training program? Do you want to achieve a personal best, or peak for some major race? Are your goals related more to physical fitness, or maybe you want only an opportunity to run with others of equal ability? Not to be overlooked are the social benefits of running with a group of like-minded individuals. A coach can be helpful in guiding you toward
your running goal--or the wrong coach may send you in the wrong
direction. You need to be careful in selecting a coach who will
be right for you, although the major problem for most runners
is finding any coach to help them |
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