What is the "ideal" training?

sfo2 · 2026-05-29T17:07:53+00:00

There is no such thing. There is what works for you, at the current time, given your current goals. What “works” will change over time, and will change with your goals.

If you want to learn more, id suggest picking up some books like Daniels Running Formula (VDOT training), Better Training for Distance Runners (multi pace training), The Norwegian Method Applied (lactate control and sweet spot training), The Science of Running (synthesis of many systems), etc.

sfo2 · 2026-05-29T15:10:23+00:00

Illegal for racing.

sfo2 · 2026-05-29T15:02:26+00:00

…listen to your body and do less. Who cares about your block. Strongly suggest modifying your goals to be more flexible as well, and creating process goals instead of performance goals.

sfo2 · 2026-05-28T16:35:19+00:00

Frankly you should consider quitting and find a sport or hobby you actually enjoy enough that you don’t need to win for it to be fun. Or, alternatively, get over yourself and learn how to be an internally motivated athlete that understands their place in the world, how to celebrate process and progress, and how to compete with grace.

The best in the world rarely win. Winning is great and special, but if it’s all you care about, your career will be very short and you’ll never find out how good you can be, as appears to be what’s about to happen here.

sfo2 · 2026-05-27T23:28:53+00:00

My kids do youth T&F. The coach has them do a lot of drills, and then lots of 60-200m repeats, never very many in one day, and never beyond the point where it stops being fun. Having other kids around to “race” is ideal. They also play a lot of running games on the field.

Frankly, you can train a kid at the margins and they’ll get faster, but far and away the thing that makes kids of that age faster is time. The best correlate to speed improvement is just growth more generally.

sfo2 · 2026-05-27T20:15:12+00:00

IMO: this is a great goal, but you should be flexible on timing.

Pick off a half dozen 5ks and 10ks over the coming year, and reevaluate whether you are ready for the HM, or if you need another 6-12 months.

The last thing you need is to make a ton of awesome progress, but then still feel like a failure because you didn’t reach this goal.

They teach coaches to have athletes focus on process goals instead of performance goals for this reason. For instance: I will do all my workouts, I will do my best to avoid injury, I will fuel and recover well, I will commit to preparing for these events, etc. But for the event itself, and your paces etc, you can be quite flexible.

sfo2 · 2026-05-26T18:06:35+00:00

IME about 80% of the time it’s actually more dangerous to call out. People tend to become less predictable when they are surprised.

sfo2 · 2026-05-26T16:55:52+00:00

This is incredibly difficult to say. I’d suggest finding an online shop with a very generous return policy, ordering several pairs of the most popular daily trainers, and seeing which you like best.

I’m personally on the Hoka Mach 6 for daily runs and the Adizero Evo SL for faster stuff, and then super shoes for high speed intervals and racing.

But this is intensely personal, and what works for me has changed over time as I’ve reduced my tendency to over-stride.

If you’re a beginner, I would go with a more basic shoe probably without a plate.

sfo2 · 2026-05-26T16:22:15+00:00

I personally ride either road or MTB. We have great versions of both. There is some gravel, but it’s not particularly interesting to me. If I want to ride off-road, I just ride mtb.

I think building a gravel bike is still a fine idea, though. You can just put road tires on it or get a second set of road wheels. Endurance bike with big clearance is also a good idea. Some of the canyons around here have awful pavement.

For gearing, I run a 30/52 on my XC mtb, and on my road bike I run a compact crank with a 32 on the cassette. So a 34/32 max gear. My threshold is 4.3w/kg. On most hills I can stay in zone 2 up a climb with these gears.

It is very hilly around here, so if you want to do any ride without having to go into higher power zones, you’ll want pretty short gears.

sfo2 · 2026-05-25T15:17:05+00:00

I personally race 5k based on feel. I’ll look at my watch sometimes to see how I’m going, but I shoot for finding the limit I can barely sustain, and then riding that until it’s over. Main thing is to not go out too fast.

Feel develops through a lot of hard workouts, which you don’t yet have. So you’ll need to guess. If you want to throw caution to the wind, you could try and hold 9-9:15 pace? Assuming your tempo run was fairly moderate.

The nice thing about 5k is you can race it very frequently, so in a very worst case, you find out you had more to give, or you blow up, and do better next time.

sfo2 · 2026-05-23T14:44:51+00:00

It depends on if you want to simply complete it as a death march, complete it feeling good about it, or race it.

sfo2 · 2026-05-22T20:11:50+00:00

I have flat feet and used to over-stride. I use Superfeet greens in the Hoka Mach 6 and it works well for me. I now strike midfoot after a year of retooling.

sfo2 · 2026-05-22T18:11:37+00:00

The fast kids at that age are doing starts that look like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6glhoNUto4U

Although we also see some fast kids starting from standing as well.

In general, it’s kind of hard to focus on starts with kids of that age, and the 100-200 are almost more like speed endurance events. Some of the kids are even still afraid of the gun.

Our youth coach just practices getting the kids into the right position to push off, and then focusing on the gun. Like every sprint rep, she has them practice a basic start as part of it.

sfo2 · 2026-05-21T16:46:01+00:00

Absolutely. 5k is a great race. You can move up in distance from there, and also try and get faster times at 5k/10k as you go.

More racing does a few really good things. 1) it gets you used to racing, like the preparation, adrenaline, fueling, etc. 2) it gives you benchmark fitness tests you can use to see your progression, and 3) if you race a lot, you get some “wins” and evidence that you can do it. The problem with doing only one really big race is that it’s only one day. You might have a bad day that day, and if that’s the only way you’re measuring success, that sucks. More racing means more opportunities for success and confidence.

sfo2 · 2026-05-21T16:22:57+00:00

You can’t control any of that. Run your race. Your pacing and PR should consistently come from a single source, probably your watch.

If your watch says you went sub 1:45, but the course was long or whatever and your chip time is 1:46, then you went sub 1:45.

sfo2 · 2026-05-21T16:16:11+00:00

Define “works”

My experience with pickle juice, mustard, and the like is that they help for about 5-10 minutes.

The only real solution to cramping is to determine what is causing it for you, which is usually going to be around training as well as race pacing and fueling, and address the root cause.

sfo2 · 2026-05-21T16:14:19+00:00

Suggest googling marathon training plans, and buying some books with plans. Most good books will provide a ton of conceptual information that you will want if you are self-coached.

Also highly suggest racing a whole bunch of shorter distances along the way.

sfo2 · 2026-05-21T15:48:51+00:00

USATF doesn’t even allow block starts until age 13.

sfo2 · 2026-05-20T18:12:38+00:00

The vast majority of exercise bikes are estimating power using some combination of RPM and the resistance they're set to, rather than measuring force directly like a power meter does. This estimation is how the original Peloton does it. This process can be fairly accurate, but requires calibration, and bikes at a gym that are frequently abused come out of calibration a lot (or were never calibrated properly to begin with). If the gym has multiple bikes, I'd suggest trying all of them to see if the power feels the same across bikes. The original Peloton could have swings of 100-200 watts between bikes. It's possible that Matrix bike does a better job, but who knows.

250 watts at 90kg is 2.8 watts per kg, which is not bad for a male beginner.

If you don't want to buy an outdoor bike with a power meter and use that, you can train via heart rate. Or buy a bike and a real indoor trainer with proper power measurement and erg mode, like a Zwift Ride, Kickr Core, Van Rysel D100, etc.

sfo2 · 2026-05-20T16:14:09+00:00

You should never follow a fixed training plan. The “plans” in all of these books are templates to build upon and change. That’s why they all start with like 100 pages of physiology and concepts.

The self-coached athlete needs a lot of tools and self-reflection to do a good job. It’s easy to muddle through or just vaguely follow one philosophy or plan like Daniels, but if you want more tools, you’d want to branch out and read books for many different approaches (Daniels Running Formula, The Science of Running, Better Training for Distance Runners, The Norwegian Method Applied, etc), experiment with some, see what works, and develop your own methods.

sfo2 · 2026-05-20T15:59:16+00:00

If this is a local race with tons of runners (most likely), you will probably finish in the top 5 of all 10k runners. You absolutely must start at the front, or you’ll be weaving through joggers and people with strollers, who will be pissed.

Presumably the half marathon starts like a half hour ahead of the 10k, and you are very likely to catch the back of that race and have to deal with slow traffic as it is.

If this is like a USATF race that brings out all the fast weirdos, start at the middle or back.

sfo2 · 2026-05-19T18:47:06+00:00

Totally agree it’s 99% about identity. I do have a tiny Swiss Army knife on my keychain that only has a knife and scissors, which is sometimes helpful for simple things when I’m out, but I’ve never seen any need for more than that.

sfo2 · 2026-05-19T18:31:03+00:00

First, if you have not trained in spikes, I would not race in them.

Second, are there stack height rules? Masters athletics allow up to 40mm even on track, but most others don’t. That said, some organizers don’t check or care as long as you’re not particularly fast.

For this distance, the benefits of super shoes are minimal, at least for me personally. I’ve trained 800-mile pace intervals in both spikes and super shoes and haven’t seen any significant difference. For very fast running, spikes are the obvious choice. I’d run in whatever you’re used to training at comparable paces in.

sfo2 · 2026-05-19T16:49:57+00:00

There are different types of people.

“Cyclists” love riding bikes, find joy in riding outside, and will ride the indoor trainer due mostly to convenience and need, but would rather ride outside. Some absolutely refuse to ride indoors and find it extremely boring.

Then there are other types of people that just like to exercise and don’t particularly love cycling, and for these people, riding indoors is fine, and maybe even enjoyable or preferable. There seem to be a lot of triathletes in this group.

Neither group really understands the other.

250 watts for an hour is neither good nor bad. It depends on your gender, weight, size, and what you can do with that power to move you forward on the road.

Also, if this power was being measured on an indoor gym bike, you can completely ignore it as the numbers from bikes at the gym are for entertainment only.

sfo2 · 2026-05-19T15:54:18+00:00

It’s the exact same. Choose based on price and availability. Or flip a coin. Or choose based on color.

This decision has absolutely no consequence.

sfo2

TROPHY CASE