Better Training for Distance Runners

Book review of Martin/Coe

I’m going to get to the Double Threshold/Norweigian Method stuff, but I wanted to first go back and review Better Training for Distance Runners by David Martin and Peter Coe. This is a somewhat foundational text in terms of distance running training, along with Lydiard. It’s often positioned as the opposite of Lydiard (ie low-volume/high-intensity) but when you actually read the book, that’s not really what they say.

I am going to focus on the main training chapters. I am not going to go over their chapters on the science and how things work. I trust that they were as up to date on the “how and why” as one could be at the time they wrote it. I am less interested in that and more interested in the “what” of training. I have said a couple of times, until some scientific advance comes along and changes the “what” of what we do, distance running training is going to look pretty much the same as it has for a while. This book set the tone for what we now know of as your standard training for distance runners.

They call it “multi-tier training.” It is laid out in Chapter 5 of the book. In this chapter, they start with goal setting and periodization. The first is a key step that most runners do but maybe don’t do properly or systematically. Runners will pick a goal (qualify for Boston!) and that’s it. Martin and Coe lay out some ideas for long-term planning and goal setting that I have not seen elsewhere. They offer a way to figure out realistic progressive goals over several years. The example they give is how to get a 14:00 5k runner to 13:00 (something we can all relate to, haha). Realisitcally, this will not happen overnight, so they give 7 years to get there. This may seem conservative to knock a minute off a 5k but it makes sense. Going from 14 to 13 is not the same as going from 21 to 20. The faster you get, the smaller chunks you are going to be able to knock off. So thinking about a seven-year timeline is appropriate here. They are looking at a 20 year old male 5000m runner and figuring that usually those athletes are top in the world around age 27, and they need (at the time of publication, of course) about 13:00 to be in the mix. So they work backwards from there. The lesson here isn’t “figure out what it takes to win an Olympic medal and work back from there” but rather, take a longer view of things than you might otherwise.

The question of periodization comes up in all the coaching education courses. It’s kind of a fancy inside-baseball word, but it just means how you organize the training over time. While goal setting can have a several-year horizon, usually periodization works over a year. Martin and Coe lay out the principles very simply and explain how the training involves the intersection of volume, frequency and intensity. They also mention density.

Multi-tier training means for them, doing the right things at the right times. Thier diagram of this concept starts with a “foundation of full recovery” then goes up through “establish aerobic base”, “Increasing intensity/careful introduction to faster work”, “consolidation/confirming”, “event fine-tuning” and then “tapering off for the ultimate goal.” This is a pretty familiar pattern. It’s familiar in part because of Martin and Coe.

Within those tiers, they talk about “domains.” They compare the different types of training to rooms in a house. These rooms will also be very familiar to most runners:

• Room 1—aerobic conditioning (i.e., easy running)

• Room 2—anaerobic conditioning (i.e., threshold)

• Room 3—aerobic capacity (i.e., hard intervals)

• Room 4—anaerobic capacity (i.e., short, fast intervals)

• Room 5—general mobility

• Room 6—circuits and weights

• Room 7—health maintenance

Interestingly, 3/7 are not running at all. And you might think there’s some overlap between Rooms 5 to 7, and there might be. But it speaks to the holistic nature of the theory. Martin/Coe are NOT “low-volume/high-intensity.” They are “what’s best at the right time.” Which is the right approach: there isn’t a system or a “formula” (sorry Jack) or a “method” (sorry Norway). There are only a few different levers that a coach and athlete can pull in training. They’ve identified the levers here. In the rest of the chapter they explain how each of them can be pulled, and the order in which they think the levers are best pulled. They talk about recovery and what recovery times are best in what situations. But they are not prescriptive about it.

And just to put a final nail in the “Martin/Coe are low-volume” coffin, in one of the charts that takes about a sample macrocycle for a middle-distance runner, among the things they mention is that there is a solid 8 week period of between 112-128k per week. For runners 5k and up they are talking about 128-153k for that phase. These are examples not prescriptions but it shows that they are not saying don’t run too much. They are saying the opposite: run a lot and run these different paces.

There’s another table in that same chapter that might be where some of the confusion comes from. It lays out Seb Coe’s training for a year and he probably maxes out at about 63km. But look closely…this is Seb Coe at 16 years old! The volume is entirely appropriate for a younger runner. In the chart for his 18 year old year, we can see he gets up to 100 a couple times and more often is in the 60s and 70s. Weekly volume is just one thing. And it’s often just a function of how much you are doing all the different required things.

There are interesting sections talking about how to predict race times, either from a test or from other race distances. This is useful information only in that it helps you set an appropriate short-term goal. Sometimes I find these sorts of things limit runners more than they help them.

One line that I have underlined in the book was this: “Keep good records, realizing that although no training program can be used more than once, the knowledge gained from progress and development during one season can be used to fine-tune a subsequent season for more effective improvement.”

The whole sentence is fantastic advise, but the bolded kernel is very rare wisdom. It reminds me of another quote, not sure who said it first, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be who you always were.” Martin and Coe understood that athletes evolve and so should training. There is not one “way” but rather, a number of essential elements that need to be arranged for maximum effect for each person.

If you are looking for a foundational text on how to train for distance running, the planning training chapter of this book is excellent. As I said, I won’t speak for the sports science as I’m sure some of our understanding has changed since this was published (and some of it hasn’t). What’s interesting is that despite that, the training advice remains spot-on.

Bakken (the Norweigian Method guy) trained with Martin/Coe and learned a lot from them. So when I review that book, you’ll see me refer back to this one!