How To Run A Faster Marathon

This is one of the most inspiring athlete case studies we've had. Gary is 62, a first responder with a brutal night shift schedule. And for years he chipped away at his fitness. But once he switched to our one on one coaching, everything changed. He is now the fittest he has ever been. And I don't just mean since joining us on the program, I mean in his whole life this is the best he's been running. His goals when he came in were to run a sub 1:55 half and a sub 4 hour 10 marathon. He was in the 4 twenties for his marathon running and just recently ran a 3:51 marathon. That's over 30 minutes wiped off over the last three years. A specific 26 minute PB since his first marathon with us and now all while averaging just four runs a week. And so the question is, how did he do it? Well, today we're breaking down exactly what training he did to achieve the results that once felt impossible for him. So let's start with the first point. He's 62 years old and he's running the best he ever has. That for me is just the unbelievable part. And I just want to touch on what he was doing before he came to us because he was on our general program which we used to offer for a few years and he got decent results. He was chipping away and getting incremental improvement. But once he switched to the one on one coaching, this is always the case. Once this happens, his results skyrocketed. And I just want to talk about why we don't offer that general program anymore. Because we know that one on one coaching isn't for everyone. Not everyone can do it for various reasons. And so we tried to offer our programming without coaching, which a lot of people request us for. And dad, we just found that people would get okay results, but they wouldn't get the results we would expect without one on coaching. And that just frustrated us because when there's not an external voice just keeping you accountable and just checking over things to make sure you're doing the right training, any type of training will improve you for sure. Any type of consistency will improve you for sure. We had a lot of athletes staying consistent on that and not seeing the same type of improvements that we get from one on one. And so we just decided that actually kind of frustrated us and we just discontinued that program because we didn't like seeing athletes put in the work like that. We really wanted to help them, but it wasn't part of our one on one coaching. And we know that with the one on one they get that help. So that's why we just decided we've just got the one type of coaching and that's what we're good at and that's what we're going to do to guarantee the results.

Yeah, I think we underestimate how important it is to have someone who can adjust the program and that could be for work changes reasons or for injury or for sickness. Whereas when you're just doing your own program by yourself, you've got the program and he had our program, but he didn't have anybody to run past adjustments that were needed. He was doing those adjustments himself. And that's the value of having the coach is to work out, okay, you might have missed two sessions. Do you just catch up those sessions or do you move on to where you were and just forget about those sessions? So those discussions have to happen. And when you're doing it by yourself, you're talking to yourself about what should I do? And you're sometimes not the best judge because the motivated athlete will just try to do. And we've had athletes try to catch up two missed sessions, they'll do one of them in the morning and then they'll catch up the next missed session that afternoon. So, you know, I'll do that for two days and catch up those four sessions instead of just, you know, having a discussion and working out what the best solution is. I just don't want to miss the sessions. That's the motivated athlete. And then you've got the converse reaction of the, the unmotivated athlete who knows no one is making them accountable because no one's looking at their program because it's just a program that they've been given and it's up to them to do it. And so they're more likely to miss more sessions. And that's what we've found is that, you know, a, you don't adjust properly, B, you miss more sessions because you don't have someone who you know is watching whether you've, hey, Jordan, did you do that session today? And if you just have yourself to talk to about that is, oh, it doesn't matter, I'll catch up, I'll catch up that session another time and I'll. A sudden you've missed one session here, two sessions next week, and over a period of six weeks you might have lost eight sessions. Whereas if you've got someone who actually makes you accountable and not that that's forcing you to do the training, but you've Got a journey with a coach where both of you are invested in your ultimate goal, which is improvement. And so straight away you've got that added value of someone who cares about your improvement and really genuinely wants to know why you didn't actually do the session today. And you know, whatever the reason is, it needs to be a good reason why you're not doing it. And there'll be a reason. And there could be. The reason is I'm just all of a sudden feeling lazy and don't want to do it. And that's okay as well. And that's what you could discuss with your coach. And I think, I think, you know, don't underestimate those valuable, seemingly less important things. But I think the proof in this is he was on that program and the improvements were there. Definitely he was getting better. But now it's alarming. Improvement from 4:23 to 4:17 is quite significant. From 4:17 to 3:51. You know, that is a huge jump. And the only difference is one was where he was doing himself with a really good program and the second section where he got the bigger jump. You would expect the biggest jump from the 4:23 to 4:17, you would expect that to be a bigger jump than. That's still a five or six minute improvement. But you wouldn't expect that 28 minute improvement when you've got a coach helping you. And so that's a really important point that the listeners out there who are trying to wing it themselves, don't underestimate how valuable it is to have someone who can actually make you accountable, who can see what to do and adjust the program and having that flexibility. You know, Jord, how difficult it is when we've got athletes who are shift workers who have. We've had seven days on, seven days off. We've had people who work night shift one week and then day shift a whole next week. So it, you know, we had people who have even, you know, Tom, I can give an example. Tom Page, for those who know Tom, you know, he might have starting at 7 and finishing at 9:30. And so where in that day is he going to train yet? He's a professional triathlete, you know, so having the understanding that there are opportunities for a coach to fix that. And we've got an example of someone who might only have 30 minutes on a Tuesday, then 30 minutes on a Wednesday. And then you can actually say it's okay to do a 15 to 20 minute run and a 20 minute ride on those two days. And knowing that the rest of the week. We've solved the solution of having two days where you've actually got limited time. So I think that's a big thing for Gary and I think that was the biggest change, that having so someone take over and give him more direction.

Yeah, it's a great example and a reminder that there's no such thing as a perfect program because then there would just be a program out there that everyone could just follow. There was nothing that different about the generic program we were giving. We make the best kind of 12 week plan for an event that we can, then someone has to follow it. But we know from our own coaching and programming that by week two, the plan is completely different because so much has changed. And so what the original plan was to get to kind of week three. By the time they get to week three, everything's been thrown out the window. Things have changed, shifts have changed, what they did the week before has changed. And so you need that constant adjustment. And you and I had a really clear example of this yesterday where I find so much value in still having you as a coach and bouncing ideas off you. Even though I know exactly what to do, I still make big mistakes myself as an athlete. And no matter who we are, we always make mistakes. And you do the same, vice versa with me. But we got to yesterday morning you said, what's the plan for today? And I just kind of said, well, I'm supposed to do quite an Easy Zone 2 bike and run, but I'm just not feeling that great. And you said straight away, well, don't do it. And I said, oh no, I'll get it done, I just don't feel that good. And you go, no, you're in really good shape and you're in the peak marathon training phase. You should be kind of jumping. And I just had a deload week last week and you're kind of saying, what's happening? Because you should be jumping out of your skin to train. After a bit of recovery, I said, oh, I just feel a little bit under the weather, a bit of a sore throat and blocked nose. And he said, absolutely no running and just spin your legs for 20 minutes if you want to jump on the bike. And I never would have come to that conclusion myself. Just the motivated mindset of, I've got my training plan, I want to get it all done, I don't want to miss any days, I'm just going to force myself to run. And as soon as you said that, I just had a relief like, oh, you're right. I really don't feel like running and that's okay. And you just need a coach to kind of bounce that idea off and to tell you that. And you just, I would tell any athlete the same thing, but you don't think of it yourself.

Yeah. And I think that's what Gary's done so well is, you know, he's got you in his corner and, and you're the voice of reason and he's super motivated. It's, he's, he's loving the program. He just give me more, Jordan. And, and for you, it's really just trying to control that. And you know, even you yesterday were saying, well, if I don't run my, I won't get my total kilometers that I'm aiming for. And I'm saying, don't worry about that. It's not about total kilometers. That's, that's a really good thing to say afterwards that, oh Yeah, I averaged 80k this week and 85 last week. But that's just, that's not the purpose of our program. It's not to see you can accumulate the most kilometers. It's to do each day according to how you feel and you've got to keep asking yourself how you're feeling any given day. And that's what we're trying to say. Where, you know, Gary going from doing his own program to having a coach in his corner, you know, the coach is asking him, how are you coping with this program? What's your fatigue like? And then we will adjust the program up or down. Whereas if you just got this generic program that's, that's still a good, a good program. There's nothing wrong with it as long as there's nothing going wrong with you in terms of sickness, work, social life, you know, so you, you will just plow ahead no matter what because the program says I have to do this. Whereas if you can discuss it with your coach, then you're going to come out with probably maybe the same answer or you might adjust it. And that's the thing that I think in this case study we want to get across where it's such an eye opener for us to see someone. We've had a couple of people now who were doing our old non coach program and now have switched across. Lee is one of the other guys that comes to mind and he has never been in such good form. He trained really hard before when he was doing it by himself on our program and he was improving. But boy, the changes. I can't wait to do A case study on him. And Gary is the one we're talking about now. And I'm, I'm so excited for him. As he's getting older, he's actually running faster than he ever has. And we're not talking a 40 year old older guy, we're talking in his early 60s. So this is one for the ages. I think it's a great podcast to have for all the people out there, giving them hope that it's never too late to improve.

Yeah, sometimes the argument back is, well, I did a generic program and I improved. And we're not saying you wouldn't. As we always say, any type of training could help you improve, but you take that same athlete and you gave them a detailed one on one coaching program where you manipulated things all the time, I guarantee you'd improve more. So both would improve, but the latter would improve more. You know, if you took the same athlete, that is. So let's go through Gary's story again. His original goals we mentioned were he wanted to run a one half marathon and a 1:55. And he's done that multiple times in training. He hasn't even had to do that in a race, which is fantastic, and run a four hour tent marathon. And he did that. And he's a second attempt with us. So his first attempt with us was 4:17. Next one he wiped off nine minutes and ran a 407, which is fantastic. And we'll go through that, that 353 result very soon. But just talking about his schedule, it is such a difficult schedule. He's a first responder and it's a crazy shift schedule. It's a 10 day cycle where it's a couple of days and a couple of nights and then it just mixes and changes a lot. And we've really had to program around that 10 days with relentless night shifts. Sometimes it's three in a row, four in a row, but most importantly, constant changes. You know, it's supposed to be something like two days, three nights, five days off, something like that. And almost every time without fail, you'll get to day five and he'll have been given an extra two night shifts in a row or an extra three day shifts in a row. And for his own sanity, he just says if I get three nights in a row by the third day I am cooked, I can't train. And he has to have a night off or a day off just to catch up on sleep. And that's common amongst all our emergency responders or even Roland mentioned It as a doctor and Tom, on previous podcasts where they say rather than trying to fit through a seven day cycle, they overload the days where they're not working and then just try and rest on the days where they have night shift or something. That's quite a common solution. But I joke with him that it's almost futile trying to schedule in the next 10 days in a row because guarantee by the time we get to day five, it's changed. And so then we have to have a conversation and go, okay, you're at day five now. You've now got this surprise three night shifts in a row. You can only train three sessions over the next four days or two sessions over the next four days. What are we prioritizing? And that's been a constant conversation of what are our goals here, what's the next race that we're aiming towards and what are the priority sessions and what do we have to cut away or not prioritize? That's kind of one of the key things that I think has made a big difference for him.

Yeah. And look, I can't reiterate anymore that what you've said, it's that flexibility and you get anxious about am I doing the right program? And it's just that calming influence of saying, no, this is how we'll go about it. And once you start to see improvement, you will trust the program more. It's sad in some ways, but it's actually a fact. When you see that you're improving, you then trust that what we're doing is working and then you're on board and 100% committed to the goal and advice. And I think that's such an important aspect that people underestimate as well, is, you know, you've got a guy who's really pushing to be a better athlete and you've got a coach who wants to be on the journey with him and, and you know, that's the exciting part for me. It's, you know, when you see his result, John, you could not wait to tell me. It was, you know, he was so excited. I'm the same with you. Whenever somebody does something, you know, we had the state titles cycling last, last week and you know, we had some of those we've talked about on the podcast many times with that, hell, yeah. Phone call that when you, you know, we always use the other term which we don't talk about on the, on the podcast. Most people listen, listen to it with their kids in the car sometimes. So we've learned a lesson There, not to use that word, but, but that's how excited it is. And you know, you just love that conversation with the athlete who's achieved their goal. And it's not about first, it's about, it's about being better than they were ever before. And, and you know, that's, that's the value of a teamwork situation where you've got someone who's in your corner.

Yes, I want to talk about that process and these times coming down and that phone call after that we got to have where April 2024. Last year he'd only been on the one on one percussion program not long and ran a 4:17 marathon in Canberra which he was absolutely chuffed with. And then 12 months later he did the same race. The difference was he was, by November last year he was absolutely flying across all three disciplines, swim, bike and run. So he is a triathlete but his focus has been on marathon. He was aimed for a 70.3 last year. His FTP was through the roof, his running was through the roof. But he had a really nasty crash a couple of weeks out from Melbourne. 70.3 and it really rocked him for a couple of months and we really couldn't start training properly again until January this year. So it was a very interrupted period and very frustrating for him to be absolute peak form and then go a fair way backwards. But then by April he was in good shape again and ran a 407 which was just a 9 minute PB from the year before on the same course, which is phenomenal. Couldn't have asked for more. And then he actually said to me last year after that 4:17, look, I've got this pretty crazy goal of. I know I said 410 was my first goal but I've got this kind of dream of running four hours at one point. Do you think that's possible? And the Canberra course is quite hilly. So I said if you can run that now, absolutely. You've got it in you to get to four hours. And we never put a ceiling on athletes. We always say we're not going to say no to anything. It's just how long it could take to get there, you know. And after running a 407 this year on that same hilly course, I said you that you're in under four hour fitness right now and you've got a lot more of that in you. And then going into this race, which is a flat course, a fast flat course, he chose to try and run his best time. And a pb. Yeah, you said to me going into the weekend, how's Gary going to go this weekend? And I said, I don't think he realizes what shape he's in. I don't think he realizes that he can run anywhere from a 348 to a 353. And his own plan had him at a bit of a conservative kind of 358 because he was a bit sheepish that he might not be able to break the four hours. And so I said to him, we have full confidence that you can. You're definitely going to break it. It's just how much can you break it by? You know, and you need to have that confidence in yourself. And. And then. Yeah, to do that and have that phone call, he was just absolutely chuffed.

I just want to jump in and say one of the reasons why he ended up with the time that you're going to talk about is mainly because he started so conservatively. And a lot of people, you know, you. If you get too far behind the pace, you're going to run, you want to run. It's harder to catch up. And it's just so not true. By giving yourself a really easy start, then you're giving yourself more opportunity to run. And so the story you tell will. Will explain that.

Yeah. And I keep saying that the time 351 and 353, like, which one did he run? Well, his marathon time, 42.2 K was 351. And, you know, in our estimations, that's what we kind of look at. And we always know that marathons are longer. And so for the, for the. His Official time was 3. 53. So you've got to take that. You've got to take the course as it is, it was 42.6km, as most of them end up being. So it's a 353. So, you know, his training peaks, gives him marathon record 351, but his official time is 353. So you take 353 and work off that.

It's funny, Jordan, when you say, you know, we know that marathons aren't, you know, marathon times, marathon distances aren't marathon distances. What do you mean? Marathon's 42.2. What do you mean? It's more so for those who are not understanding that if the course is measured on the. On the shortest line, and as a marathon runner, you don't get to run the shortest line, you could run some of the, you know, a course could have a lot of turns where you're Running five wide, just like you are on an athletic track. If you run in lane forward and do a 400 meter in lane four, you'll end up running 410 meters instead of 400 if you do one lap. So the same in a marathon course, you. Some courses you can end up running 400 meters more over 40, and unfortunately, that's the time you get given. But a lot of athletes, I remember one particular guy, Daniel Burn, who talked about who was trying to break three hours for three years, and he actually, in his. In his Garmin watch, ran 2:58,259 twice. And the actual course gave him 3 hours and 30 seconds, 3 hours and 1 minute. And so the third year, we had to take him back to this hand course. And he was saying, I was outside the MCG and I still had 400 meters to run. And it said I'd finish my, my marathon. But the race doesn't finish till you're inside the MCG and you pass the finish line. So. So we have to allow for that. So the third year we allowed for it. And I said to him, you have to run literally 358 to, you know, 357 to break three hours on the. On this long course. And so that's what we mean by not all marathon courses are the same distance, but they should be, but they're not.

So let's go into the race. So one of the best things about Gary is his attention to detail and his willingness to live by our travelo principles of plan, prepare, perform. He's just so well planned and prepared. And an example of this is he went to the course days early to be well prepared and be well organized. And then he drove the course the day before because it was not where he lived. So he really wanted to know what the course is like. And in his preparation, he's driving the course and figuring out all the areas, and he calls me and says the. This is a disaster. This is supposed to be. This is advertised as a fast, flat PB course. And it's, you know, it's advertised as a Boston Marathon qualifier for people that want to run a quick, quick course. And he's going, there's a section of farm road here that it goes down, which is completely bogged in the mud for one or two kilometers. And there's no, there's no clear path on it, like you just can't run. And I'm sort of going, geez, I'm so glad you drove the course, because that is really bad information to hear. And I said, that kind of impacts our decision making a little bit. Like on all the flat sections, I feel like you could maybe be a bit more aggressive in the plan because you're going to be slowed down there and you just have to run the pace that you're on there and you can't control that. And so really good planning, performing, planning and preparing. And fortunately for him, he double checked that the next morning when he got to the race and said to a marshal, what's with that farm section where it's completely muddy? And the marshal said, what are you talking about? There's farm section? And he, in his recon, he'd gotten the GPS wrong and taken a wrong turn and gone down a path that didn't go down. So, yeah, congrats to Gary for doing the recon. Unfortunate that that mistake gave a little heart attack for both of us. Going far out. This was the plan to get a really fast time, but even better for him to double check. And that's what planning, preparing is to go and drive the course properly. And so from there, he is one of the few athletes that came to us with a conservative race plan. You know, for a lot of times for, for any race, triathlon, endurance, marathon, athletes will come to us and we just say, where have you done this in training? Because it's pretty aggressive and if you haven't done it in training, we can't just turn up on race day and expect you can do that. We often have to bring athletes back a little bit and adjust their expectation. But for him, he'd proven in training that he could run 5:31 pace for 35 kilometers. And so his plan was a little bit conservative at 5:35 to 5:40 pace, which would get him under four hours. I said, Gary, you've already ran 35K at 5:31. And that wasn't even a max effort. You know, on race day in peak conditions, you're going to be able to run sub 5:30, and you need to have that confidence you can do that. And so our normal plan start off conservative. You know, he went out at 5:50 pace, just built into the marathon. I said, build into those five 35km, but very quickly, do not be afraid to get to 5:30 pace and start running some 5:30 kilometers. And then at the back end, if you feel even better, you can do that. And he took that advice on board, had the guts and bravery to do it, and did the first half at 5:31 pace, was feeling really comfortable, there was no muddy section and then did the second half at 5:27 pace. As good a negative split as you can get in a marathon. Average 5, 29 for a 353 marathon, which he just could not wipe a smile off his face.

Yeah, and the way he finished, you know, they're the things that you want to hone in on. You know, he was running, I think he said, Last 3K at 5:18 pace, you know, and, and passing people who are so dead in the, you know, for the world to see. They were just struggling and, and you know, even though those people are struggling, it's amazing how they love to cheer you on when you're flying and, and they're dead to the world. They're so great. Run, mate. You know, it's quite amazing. Marathon runners who see someone who's really performing well will actually give you the kudos while you're out there, even though they're struggling themselves. But that's a really good experience is when you are flying because let's face it, if you negative split, there isn't anybody who's going to be doing that in the race. We could count. And you and I have done this. We've gone into a lot of marathons and counted how many people ran faster second half than they did first half. And they're on one hand in most marathon races and they're normally the people who have the best outcome. And so you are running faster than everybody around you. And so that is really a great feeling and a buzz.

Yeah. The percentage of actual negative splits is wildly low. And I have looked into the data extensively because people keep arguing with me about it and I go, well, I have the data, but we talk a lot about coming home strong and that normally means holding pace. That doesn't mean for most athletes actually getting 10 seconds per km quicker. A lot of people think, oh, by the end I might feel fresh enough to run sub 520 pace. We just go, that's not the feeling you're going to have at the 39 kilometer mark. You're going to be exhausted, but you should have the strength from training to hold that pace. That's feeling strong. When everyone else is dropping by 10 or 20 seconds per km, they're fading badly. But for him to actually do the last three cat 518 pace, that is just, that is literally flying home. That's sprinting home, you know, relative to the pace you're running for a marathon, which is unreal.

And to be fair, if we were, you know, being super analytical, we would say, well, we underestimated your pacing and you could have actually started a lot faster. But you know, that's what, that's the learnings that you get. You would much rather do it this way and then get super confident for his next run. That yep, 5:30 pace is my pace and I actually did 5:30 whatever it was for the first half and 5:20 something for the second half. I know that next time I don't have to start at 5:50, I can start it at 5:35. And instantly, you know, you, if you're on a similar course that's got similar terrain, similar temperature, a lot of things have to be marrying up the same. You've had the right preparation and tapering, then you should be super confident that if you can finish the last 3, 4, 5K, you know, 5, 18, 525, 25, that tells you that you know, you probably got a little bit more left in the tank so you have the opportunity to take a little bit more risk. And that's a good thing to learn as well. And that's something that I'm sure he'll take on board.

And everyone wants to know what did he actually do? So let's get into the exciting stuff because everyone always asks what was the actual training? What were the keys here? I think we're going to go through some of the keys to training and I think there's a few take home messages that are really important for this example and I think one of them is that he just does a lot of easy long running. He just gets really consistent kilometers up. Now he doesn't do crazy amount of kilometers, but I think one of the, one of the first things to point out is that he's just every week he's always managing just to get a couple of at least 60, 70, 80 minute runs in. And that's a big difference compared to just doing your Easy runs at 30 or 40 minutes. I think that time on feet has really, really helped him and I will commend him here. And this is what I love about Gary is that he just loves running and he just loves long runs. And he always puts it in his notes after. I just love that run, absolutely love that run. And for a lot of people they see the long run and it's a little bit of fear and they go, oh, not another boring long run. But I love his reframe on it. He just goes, this is my favorite time. I love getting up super early. I just got the road to myself. I just love going for a 70 or 80 minute run. And that might not be his long run for the week. And I just love that I just.

Have to butt in people who are saying they struggle to run. And I know you actually said this the other day in your long run, you are really struggling with this and I just wanted to scream out loud, you should be so grateful that you are able to run. And you know, I know that's a warped perspective from me, but I can't run. Running was my passion and I give anything to run. And I love the fact that Gary's just saying, oh, I just love that run. That was great. And of course it is, it is a hard thing to do. It's, it's a, it's a challenge to keep running for so long. It's not a normal activity that you go out and run for two and a half hours, you know, so, so I get that. But you've got to remember and put it in perspective that, you know, it is a privilege to be able to run still. And as, as a 62 year old, he's one of the few people, you know, a lot of older runners who are great runners when they were younger, literally can't run at all. And I'm in that category, not in the great runner category. I'm in the category that can't run at all. So, yeah. So, you know, that's, that's a really good thing to hear.

Yeah. And I'll even give an example of some shifts. He's starting at 4:30am and he's saying to me, all right, I'm going to get up at 2 and get my long run done before shift and then get into shift and I'm going to. I don't think that's a good idea. You really need to prioritize sleep. Can you find a better time to do it? You don't have to do it at 2:30am in the morning. And he goes, no, no, don't worry, I love it. I love being the only one on the road and I think that's fantastic. He just loves it that much. He goes, that's my solitude. Time to get into it. I just think that's awesome. So in terms of Ks per week, over the last three to six months he's probably averaged 37 Ks a week. But in peak marathon phase he was more running 50 to 60 ks a week, but that was only from 4 runs per week. So he averaged 3 to 4 and never normally above 4. And so that's a really important point that just 4 runs a week hitting in peak phase 50 to 58 ks per week, but getting a lot of fitness from cross training, which we always talk about, and just prioritizing bike endurance and some key bike sessions where it was a lot of easy running, some tempo marathon efforts with swimming and cycling built in there because he's got, his next goal is a 70.3. So I think that's, it's not outrageous running, it's not unachievable, it's all doable and it's really specific key runs to get in.

I think Jord listeners have to really understand that if you have the ability to swim and ride, that is actually an advantage if you're training for a marathon. If you're just a marathon runner who doesn't have access to a bike and can't swim and, and let's face it, there are a lot of runners out there who can't swim. That's why they choose to run. So if you've got that facility available, swimming and riding, that is really helpful for your marathon running. And you know that I've been pushing you on one hard bike ride each week in your marathon preparation. Because we can't run you fast. We want to do a couple of hard run sessions. But even you as a young guy, it's too much load for your body. We're risking huge injury. So I'm getting you to do some VO2 bike sessions and you're getting your heart and lungs huffing and puffing. You know, you're exploding on these sessions, but you're not damaging your running legs. You're getting the stimulus that we are after for that intensity from riding. And so if he didn't have that facility as a rider or a swimmer, then we would have to risk a bit more with his running, but we wouldn't really risk that much. We would only do one run out of those four. And we'd probably add one more, one more run into his program if he could cope with it. But that one extra run would only be some slight intensity which would be probably half marathon pace or somewhere between 10k and half marathon pace, where we're not trying to get him to do 4 hundreds on the track to get his intensity because he'll break down and he'll lose his consistency. As a 62 year old, that's a given. And even as a 20 or 30 year old, that's probably, you know, risky as well. So every athlete must have their own set of circumstances before we decide what works. And we're giving you an idea of what worked for Gary but that doesn't mean that you just grab this and take that on board with what you do. You know, you've got some subtle differences that nuances that you, that you probably need a coach to actually work out. You know, what should your running program look like?

I think one thing you did really well was when work changes were happening, which as we said happened almost every cycle, we would just say, okay, let's shuffle things around and make sure we hit all our running sessions, because that's most important right now towards the marathon. But then the next most important was probably that endurance rider. So if you can get that in over the 10 days, where can we fit that? And he really made sure he got that in despite shift changes. I think that would really hold him in good stead to get that extra aerobic fitness without having to run more volume. Exactly what you're talking about. And one last point I wanted to talk about was on the plan prepare before motto in our podcast episode a couple of weeks ago where you gave us your biggest lessons over the last four decades of being an athlete in coaching. One lesson that you mentioned was your meticulous analysis of training sessions and races. And it's not enough just to do them, but you want to look back on what did you do and did that actually work? Did it result in a test improvement or a race improvement? And Gary writes detailed notes on every single session in trainingpeaks. He writes how he felt, what his plan was for the session, what his motivation was for the second session, did he succeed and why it happened, why did he succeed or why did he not for that session. And he writes that every single time. And he doesn't just do that for the coach, he does that for himself as well to look back on. And I think that's a big reason that he stays on track and he stays motivated and he stays disciplined. And that is next level kind of analysis, which I really love.

Yeah, the training peaks post activities comments section is really your diary, the athlete's diary. And look, the coach will look at that. But you know, I instruct our coaches never to write in that coach's in that athlete's post activities notes because that's their diary and that's their information. And you know, you can flip back six months and check out what you did for that long run. And you've got detailed notes about how I felt that day, what my pace was, what my fueling was. You should be in those long endurance sessions talking about what fueling you did on that day so that you can really understand what the weather conditions were. You know, they're really important details that help you understand where you are now, where you've come from. And I think that's that, that attention to detail is such an advantage if you can, you know, I know it's time consuming, but that's part of your training program is to plan things and prepare and then, you know, the doing the training sessions every time, the doing bit, that's only one aspect.

I just want to read out his text after the race because it's just so nice and, and such a good way to finish off the story. He said, I wouldn't have done that without last night's conversation. It helped me adjust to be more comfortable and okay with hitting 5 30s. And I'm very grateful for your confidence in me. It was a perfect day and I made sure my attitude was right. My recon was so important because I was familiar and comfortable with where I was and where the particular points were. When I got to 32ks, I was keen to slightly increase my pace and counting down the last 10km, I was so excited I couldn't stop smiling. I was on top of the world. In the last two kilometres, not only did I do a pb, not only did I go on to four hours, I finished over two minutes quicker than the best version of my plan. The finish line was very emotional. I cried when I crossed the line. I've never done that before. That's just what you want.

Yeah, that's a great finish too. You know, people say, oh gee, 350, that's not sensational. Well, it is. It's incredibly sensational. And that's the thing that a lot of listeners need to get a perspective on. You don't have to be a 2, 20, 30 marathon runner to say that it's a great outcome. We get so much joy out of a lot of our beginners who could be five hour marathon runners, who end up being four and a half hour marathon runners. And to see someone go 30 minutes quicker over this space of time, that brings us so much joy. So I think everybody listening to that, you can get such emotional positivity, endorphins, whatever you like to call it, from just working hard, preparing well, doing what's necessary, executing to the nth degree and then getting the final result. That's what this sport is about and that's what, you know, that's what makes people do marathons, that's what makes people go and train, that's what makes people reach out for coaching. It's you want to be the best version of yourself and you're going to spend all this time training. Why not do it properly and get some guidance and feedback as you're going? And look, the end result, it's not always going to be rosy. There's going to be disappointments and that's even better that you've got someone to share it with and try and work out what went wrong so we can fix it next time. It's not always going to be these stories and we don't often bring a story to people's attention on these case studies because we don't have many people who don't actually, over the journey of six months to six years, find somewhere where they've improved. And that's, that's the message that's really super important. It's, it's, you know, this is your passion, it's not your job, it's what you want to do and you want to enjoy it. So this is the, the end result that we're so grateful for when someone, it gets them so emotional that they're in tears what they've just achieved.

If you'd like to get the same level of detailed coaching and analysis and feedback to improve your own running, if you're aiming for a marathon or your next ironman and you want to improve all aspects or your next half ironman, it's not just based on running. You can go to tribalocoaching.com and apply to get coaching there. We coach all our athletes the same way in terms of our principles and our methodology. But as you just heard in this episode, we apply it to you individually. So go to tribalocoaching.com to apply to get coaching. We have a guarantee that if you don't improve in the first block of training, it's money back for you. And we don't say you get all your results in the first block of training. We just know straight away we can get you to improve. And as you've heard from this episode over the course of the journey, we can get you to improve massively, which is the goal. So that's it for this episode. A big congratulations to Gary. We're very proud to have Gary as a tribal athlete. He represents everything we love about training and racing and mindset. Congratulations, Gary. We can't wait to see you continue to improve in the marathon and your triathlon journey. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode. Sam.