It is interesting how our experiences shape our philosophy over time. My earliest example was when I started running cross country in high school. I ran track in junior high but wasn’t bothered with cross country. My coach, Mike Noll, was very pace-oriented with an emphasis on negative splits and since it was really my first experience, though that’s how it was supposed to be. The kids that ran in middle school were basically taught to blast off and see how well you could hold on. They were able to get away with it because the distance was a mile and a half. In high school, the distance doubled, which meant that there was twice as long for things to go wrong.
We have all gone out way too hard before and recognize that the time you can lose is on an exponential level!
Needless to say, my college coach was very similar, as are Kevin and Keith. All have different nuances to their approach, but the bases were all very similar. Fortunately, I thrived under those theories and have taken the same approach to all of you who listen to me. When I was a part of the ODP, I had many, many teammates from all different types of programs. And like anything, people struggled with adapting to this type of philosophy, while others thrived. Truth be told, I feel like the people who thrived were the people like myself.
We were moderately talented but really had to execute perfectly if we were to compete at the level we did. So, we had to learn paces by running paces- over and over and over again.
Now, a couple of years ago, I made a post saying as much. A prominent runner replied, “Why not just train them to race?” Now, to be fair, I really don’t think they were being facetious. I genuinely think they were asking as a type of “well why wouldn’t you just do this? I thought about it for a long time. At their level, they could train to win a major race. I was not there, and most of my athletes aren’t at that level. Many of you are training to beat yourself or to qualify for Boston. Things like that. I was trying to run PR’s, qualify for World teams, and those types of things.
So, I sense it already, “aren’t you selling yourself short?”
No, I don’t think so and that is really what I want to cover. I don’t feel like I did, because I feel like when the situation did arise, I had the killer instinct and disregarded pace when I was late in a competitive situation. But it was because of knowing where I was at with pace that put me in the situation, to begin with! I will give you two examples of races, both of which were in the same training cycle.

* In 2011, I and a couple of teammates were on the training cycle. Our first race was a half marathon in Naples, Florida. I had never heard of this race before, but somehow everyone and their brother were at this race! So, it was still kinda early in our block and we were training for a pretty fast go. We were all trying to run under 1:04 for the half- pretty close to 4:50 pace per mile. At Naples, I tried to race the crew. There were some guys there like I described at the start. Go out hard and hang on. I was naive and thought it might work and I wanted to race the competition. I knew we were fast, but I disregarded it. By 10k, I was fried. I spent the second half of the race watching people pull away from me like I was stuck in peanut butter. It was pretty disheartening because it was a wasted opportunity.
* Now, about four weeks later, I was in New Orleans for the Rock n Roll half marathon. I had two other teammates who were trying to get Trials qualifiers by running a fast enough half time. So, I went in more fit than I was previously, but having no intention to race the leaders. This time the gun goes off and we settle into the pace right away. This time it felt like a jog, but we were dialed in. The two leaders had jumped out early, but by four miles the lead had stayed the same distance. I knew we were on the pace and it felt comfortable. So,