Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow)

Praise for Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow)

“The training of an elite marathoner can seem mysterious to the majority of runners; this book is an excellent inside look into the ways the pros prepare physically and mentally to compete at their best. Every runner can apply these lessons to their own training in order to reach their next level.”--Molly Seidel, Olympic Marathon Bronze Medalist

“Fitzgerald and Rosario make a perfect team, distilling decades of in-the-trenches experience into clear and practical advice that any runner who wants to get better can (and should) apply.”--Alex Hutchinson, author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Auteur

Matt Fitzgerald is an acclaimed endurance sports writer, coach, and certified sports nutritionist. He has authored or coauthored more than 25 books, including The Comeback Quotient, Running the Dream and How Bad Do You Want It? Also an award-winning journalist, he has written for Bicycling, Maxim, Men’s Journal, Outside, Runner’s World, Shape, Triathlete, and other major magazines and websites.

An All-State runner in high school and an All-American triathlete as an adult, he continues to compete at a high level as both a runner and a triathlete. He has coached other endurance athletes since 2001. He is a cofounder of 80/20 Endurance, an Internet-based training resource of runners and other athletes.

Ben Rosario is the head coach of the HOKA NAZ Elite professional distance running team in Flagstaff, Ariz. His athletes have finished in the top ten of the Boston, Chicago, New York City and London Marathons, and have won multiple national titles including the 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon. Before founding NAZ Elite, he co-owned Big River Running Company, a run-specialty store in his hometown of Saint Louis, Mo. Ben has co-authored two previous running books, Inside A Marathon and Tradition, Class, Pride.

Texte du rabat

Cutting-edge advice on how to achieve your personal best, for everyone from casual runners to ultramarathoners.

In 80/20 Running, respected running and fitness expert Matt Fitzgerald introduced his revolutionary training program and explained why doing 80 percent of runs at a lower intensity and just 20 percent at a higher intensity is the best way for runners at all levels-as well as cyclists, triathletes, and even weight-loss seekers-to improve their performance.

Now, in this eye-opening follow-up, Fitzgerald teams with Olympic coach Ben Rosario to expand and update the 80/20 program to include ultramarathon training and such popular developments as the use of power meters.

New research has bolstered the case that the 80/20 method is in fact that most effective way to train for distance running and other endurance sports. Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow) shows readers how to take the best practices in elite running and adopt them within the limits of their own ability, lifestyle, and budget.

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Follow the Leaders

 

 

Running is a uniquely democratic sport. When you line up at the start of, say, the New York City Marathon as a middle-of-the-pack runner, you are standing on the same bridge (the Verrazzano-Narrows) as the professionals, feeling the same nervous tension they feel and hoping to reach the same finish line in Central Park. Such inclusiveness may also be found at events like the USATF Cross Country Championships, where elite and recreational runners alike have the opportunity to test their fitness on the host course. Even made-for-TV competitions such as the Millrose Games feature races for pros, high school athletes, and club runners of all ages. In running, we're all in it together in ways that professional and amateur athletes in other sports are not.

 

Away from the racecourse, however, the sport of running is oddly divided. In their training methods, eating habits, recovery methods, and other practices, elite and nonelite runners could scarcely be less alike. The pros do most of their running at low intensity, whereas nonelite runners do most of theirs at moderate intensity. The pros perform functional strength workouts designed especially to meet the specific needs of runners, whereas nonelite runners are more likely to eschew strength training altogether or do it in forms like CrossFit or yoga that were not developed with runners in mind. The pros typically maintain a balanced, well-rounded, inclusive, and shtick-free diet based on natural foods of all kinds, whereas nonelite runners more often go for elimination-type diets (like keto, plant-based, or Paleo) that are all about exclusion.

 

You get the idea. It almost seems as if nonelite runners are deliberately doing the opposite of everything the elites do, though the reality is that, for reasons Coach Ben and I will get into later, most aren't even aware of how the pros balance their intensities, strength train, eat, and so forth. As that rare runner who, in a sense, has a foot in both worlds, elite and nonelite, I am keenly aware of this rift. An amateur runner myself, I coach fellow amateurs, but I also interact with the pros through my writing and can use what I learn from them to help my runners and myself improve.

 

It's a role I was practically born to fulfill. When I was eleven years old, I became both a runner and a fan of professional running in a single moment. That moment occurred during the 1983 Boston Marathon, when I watched my father complete his first 26.2-miler and saw Joan Benoit record a world-best marathon time for women. My dad's achievement inspired me to follow in his footsteps and run, while Joan's admittedly much greater feat moved me to become an active follower of professional running, beginning with local heroes Lynn Jennings, a three-time world champion in cross country, and Cathy Schiro, a national high school cross country champion and Olympian, both of whom lived minutes away from my family's home in New Hampshire's seacoast region.

 

It so happened that the coach of the girls' cross country team at the high school I attended was Jeff Johnson, who held the distinction of having been Nike's first employee and who'd formerly rubbed elbows with the likes of Steve Prefontaine and the legendary University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman. As a member of the boys' team, I was never directly coached by Jeff, but he did mentor me to some degree, instilling in me a better understanding of state-of-the-art training principles than most runners my age possessed.

 

If Jeff Johnson wasn't your typical high school cross country coach, neither was Tom Donnelly your typical Division III running coach. An All-American performer at Villanova University in the 1960s, Tom went on to become the men's cross country and track coach at tiny Haverford College in Pennsylvania. There, he developed a reputation for turning B-level high school runners like me into collegiate All-Americans while as a side gig also coaching elite runners including Ireland's Marcus O'Sullivan, a three-time world champion at 1500 meters. Unfortunately, I didn't actually run at Haverford, having temporarily burned out on the sport, so Tom's influence on me, like Jeff's, was mostly indirect.

 

After graduating in 1993, I took my English degree to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I found a job writing for a newly launched endurance sports magazine. Being immersed in this environment drew me back into running and at the same time afforded me a chance to learn directly from world-class endurance athletes and elite-level coaches. Tour de France cyclist Bob Roll, world champion runner Regina Jacobs (later busted for doping, alas), mountain biker Marla Streb, and triathlon coach Phil Maffetone are just a few of the many luminaries I interviewed and wrote…