Now for those who are stateside (USA), the Galloway and Penguin training methods are often slated for being too soft and dumbing down the sport of running and specifically marathon events. Now the title in itself will have those runners who train religiously to run to the best of their ability wanting to have a hernia or quite literally puke. Yes, some of these runners can be a little sensitive about their sport. But now we hope that everyone reads a little further and actually gets the point of this article.
Here's why such seemingly mindless training programs are good for the elite runner, well in a round-about way.
I can recall years ago when I told the twin brother of an elite athlete to go for a walk on his day off and the humour of the request filtered back to me via the training squad grapevine. He had a good chuckle with his brother, who had recorded 43:09 for 15k in 1991. My reasoning behind it was the athlete was inconsistent (in training) and had recently joined the squad and I wanted to avoid him becoming injured after a session he had run with the other guys, when he should have been running at a less intense effort. It was not because we were preparing to franchise the gallo or penguin way to the elite athlete.
I digress, back to the why. Well, it is pretty simple really, because the more people you have coming into the sport, the more running shoes and accessories are sold and the more people participate in events. The trickle down effect is shoe sponsorhip etc for elite runners as well as often an increase in prize money for the faster athletes who can compete in the Top 10 for the money spots.
And believe it or not the more people talking about the sport and being introduced to the sport the more chance we have of keeping running alive and popular, as well as actually unearthing those rough diamonds of considerable talent.
Having been involved in the sport of athlete development, I always understood the value of the so-called slower runner within the club, they were so often the support and necessary ingredient to keep the top athletes' mind on the job, the enthusiasm and praise heaped on the elite went a long way to keep the coals of the athletes' ego glowing during a down period either through illness or injury.
The slower runner has a tremendous amount to offer running and their enthusiasm and the money they put into it keep the sport healthy. More people joining clubs and the more professional the clubs become the more chance an athlete has to run faster with a good club support structure.
Just don't ever expect Time-to-Run to have walking in their marathon programs or even marathon programs for beginners for that matter. We advocate marathon training programs for the novice, a runner who has come through the full process from the beginner status to runner and now looks to cover the marathon distance.
With that explained we can mention that we sincerely hope to be launching our very own marathon programs shortly which will follow a very similar style as our structured 10k training programs
So for now, till then
TheEd
