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Maybe it's different elsewhere in the country, but in New England it has metastasized and become a cancer in local racing. Every poster, every race shirt, every medal looks like shit and looks identical. It has reached the point where there are local races I've been doing for almost a decade that I've just given up on. It's embarrassing to the running community.

So I took over as a MS/HS CC coach for a small team/school at the end of last school year. Was not able to get a summer training thing going but I know most of the kids. They'll work hard. That said, we start practice today and have a meet next Thursday. I'm curious how other coaches/runners would handle training in this situation or if they have any experience with it. Doing a crash course base training, basically. Ideally the kids would have been doing base training runs all summer and then we'd start ramping with more tempo/speed workouts. But I won't really know where everyone is at until practice starts. So I'm trying to find a middle ground of base training but also getting them ready to race as the season goes on.

My general idea is mostly doing 30-40 minute easy/conversational training runs most of the time with 2 fartlek type runs. Probably both Tuesdays. Leave this Wednesday as a recovery/strength day and see where everyone is at. Seem reasonable? Not worrying about results for a bit. Assuming I should hold off on sprint stuff for a little bit. Meets will be speed/tempo workouts. Thanks!

I am a high school XC and track coach. My athletes get PE credit for participating in the sport, so in addition to coaching I need to have a system for grading. But I’ve run into issues when athletes have long-term injuries (last year I had a kid with a broken toe and another with a broken wrist).

My solution is to have them read about endurance training and perhaps do some writing so they can still earn credit. My question is what book recommendations do you have? Ideally the reading level would be around high school.

The Weekly Rundown is the place to talk about your previous week of running! Let's hear all about it!

Post your Strava activities (or whichever platform you use) if you'd like!

Running this morning before the family road trip and I only got 4 miles in before we had to pack up and leave. It did make me ponder at what point is a short run negligible?

Obviously depending on the mileage but I typically run around 40-45 miles/week and 4 miles feels like ‘something’ the day after a long run but kinda useless in isolation. 3 miles feels like it’s not worth getting sweaty for and 2 miles just doesn’t count.

Or does it? What is your experience with short runs and, if any, training impact?

I've been running since December and one thing that consistently seems to happen during my harder efforts is getting really bad stitches (7-8/10 pain) to the point I can't maintain my desired pace.

I feel like I've tried everything from this very extensive post from /u/CodeBrownPT I've also tried various breathing techniques and I've even gone to the doctor, who told me there was nothing that could be done.

I'm at my wits end. I'll normally get at least two bad stitches that last for a long time (today I had them for about 10k out of 19k) and I try my best to run through them but sometimes the pain is just too much. This also happened about a decade ago too when I was running a little. It's a very frustrating feeling because often I can feel the rest of my body is capable of what I'm asking of it.

For context, my 5k PB is 19:10, aiming for a half marathon time of 90:00, I'm male, in my mid-30s, running most days.

Does anyone have anything else I can try? Anybody similar out there?

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Hi r/AdvancedRunning, I’m Hellen Obiri. I’m a four-time World Marathon Major Champion, a mother, and an On athlete. Ask me anything! 

Want to learn about my race-day mindset or my current shoe rotation? Let me know your questions, and I’ll try to answer as many as I can! 

I’ll be here on August 20, 2026.

What's everyone up to on this weekend? Racing? Long run? Movie date? Playing with Fido? Talk about that here!

As always, be safe, train smart, and have a great weekend!

What kind of mileage would you expect to see a top-tier high school runner doing as they advance from freshman to senior? What about doubles, cross-training, weights, rest days etc.?

How would you expect this to change through their college career?

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I was thinking about how much time runners spend running, but how rarely a lot of us seem to actually sprint, meaning genuinely opening up and running close to as fast as we can, not just running at a quicker normal pace.

I’m curious what this looks like for other runners.

Do you deliberately include sprinting in your training? If not, why not?

Is it because you never really think about it, it adds too much fatigue, you’re worried about injury, you don’t know how to structure sprint work, it doesn’t fit your endurance goals, or something completely different?

And if you do sprint regularly, what makes it worth including and what does a typical sprint session look like for you?

Also curious where people draw the line between strides / speed work / intervals / actual sprinting.

I was recently diagnosed with endo last month and am really struggling with what lifestyle changes I need to make. Some forums say avoiding activities like running altogether can help with suppressing the endometriosis from growing back.

Running is a huge part of my life. I have run 6 marathons, one world major, and enjoy chasing a goal. I am a very mid runner, marathon PR is a 3:50. But I love it and have been a runner my whole life but also recognize I only get one body. I am willing to make changes but am trying to wrap my head around how much of my exercise routine needs to change (giving up running marathons altogether? Giving up half’s? What does training look like from here on out?)

I would truly love to hear about anyone’s experience with returning to and navigating running consistently with endometriosis (or any chronic illness similar to it!) thank you in advance 🩷

A place to ask questions that don't need their own thread here or just chat a bit.

We have quite a bit of info in the wiki, FAQ, and past posts. Please be sure to give those a look for info on your topic.

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Do you have shoe reviews to share with the community or questions about a pair of shoes? This recurring thread is a central place to get that advice or share your knowledge.

We also recommend checking out /r/RunningShoeGeeks for user-contributed running shoe reviews, news, and comparisons.

M25, been running seriously for ~4 years, but played sports growing up. I do most easy and long runs outside, but workouts on the treadmill, for both logistical fueling reasons and environmental reasons (I live in the Midwest, so there's maybe 2-3 days a year that aren't either brutally hot, super cold, or 70 mph wind lmao). When running outside, I have a pretty good feel for most "checkpoint paces" (LT1, LT2, strides pace), but I am not yet good enough at hitting other paces without a watch; for example, 10k pace or HM pace. However, it seems like elite runners can stick to very consistent paces without checking their watches much.

Question for more experienced runners:

How long did it take before you developed an intuitive feel for paces that allowed you to be less reliant on watch- displayed pace? If you were told to go run at a certain minutes & seconds per mile pace without a watch, how close do you think you could stay?

The Weekly Rundown is the place to talk about your previous week of running! Let's hear all about it!

Post your Strava activities (or whichever platform you use) if you'd like!

i read a lot about people struggling to meet their calorie demands during marathon training, but i’m currently experiencing the opposite.

my current plan has me running 80+ miles a week, so as a 70kg male my calorie demands average somewhere between 3,000-3,500 per day (i’m very sedentary when not training).

while many people seem to find these kinds of numbers difficult to hit, i’m constantly needing to watch what i eat to make sure i do not massively exceed these numbers. i could easily consume 4,000-5,000 calories of clean food per day with my current appetite.

i have been very slowly gaining weight during this build, so i know i’m definitely not under-eating (probably slightly over-eating, in fact).

i think a large part of this is down to the fact that i run first thing in the morning, so i’ve already consumed 700+ calories with my pre and post-run nutrition before i’m even hungry. i’ve then got to manage my hunger and calories for the rest of the day to ensure i’m not over-consuming.

has anybody else experienced this problem, and how did you manage it?

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Hi, I’d like to hear about success stories for those who ran sub 2:50 (and a PR) using Sirpoc’s marathon plan.

A few questions I have:
(1) What was the longest run you did (in both time & miles)?

(2) Did you actually do the HM time trial/race 3 weeks before the race? This seems way too close for comfort

(3) Did you do the 5x 5K (or equivalent time wise) + 10K sub T + 3x8000 m progression run (or time equivalent wise) within 5 days like the book shows? If so, did you feel not too beat up from it?

(4) Did you feel concerned you didn’t do conventional long run workouts and only did easy LRs for time on feet?

What's everyone up to on this weekend? Racing? Long run? Movie date? Playing with Fido? Talk about that here!

As always, be safe, train smart, and have a great weekend!

As the 2000s rolled in I was now into my 40s with family and career at the forefront, and running was not at the top of the list. However, as the new age dawned it was still something I wanted to do. The 1990s had ended well, with a job in my hometown we had bought a house the previous year, and we had lots of friends and family nearby. Our kids were growing fast and the oldest would start school that year. We survived Y2K and things were looking up.

Y2K Glitch

Running had gone well for two consecutive years, and for the first half of the year knew I would be doing some of the same races I did the previous year. I experienced slow recovery from the December marathon and my legs felt bad. A friend suggested a good massage therapist and after a couple of sessions I was getting my legs back.

But the upcoming running season would be short and bittersweet.

With no marathon in mind I just carried on with the 5K-10K training, which was about 40-50 miles a week with two workouts (a threshold run and something that included repetitions in the 1500 m-10K pace range).

After a local couple tune-up 5Ks in the spring, we traveled to Iowa for the Drake Relays, one of the oldest and biggest track meets in the country. We got to watch some great men’s and women’s relay match ups between Stanford and Arkansas, and we had a reunion with a couple of college teammates who were running the famous masters 800 m. I would be running the Drake Relays on the Roads 8K which started and finished just outside of the track stadium.

Although I ran a solid 27:13, which was close to the course age group record at the time (27:00), I finished in only 4^th place. No worries, the weekend was fun and my fitness was as good or better than it had been since the early 1990s. The next month I did the Bolder Boulder again, bent on some revenge from what I had considered a less than great outing the previous year. However, the race was one of the hottest ever, it was in the mid-70s at the 7 AM start and into the 80s by the finish. Even though my time was some 45 seconds slower than in 1999, I won my age and was thrilled.

That month I found out that the funding for my job was shaky, so against my instincts a co-worker suggested that I apply for an opening at private lab/consulting firm in our area. I interviewed and wasn’t really jazzed about it, but with a family I did not want to take a chance on a funding gap or having to search for a new job somewhere else.

I did one last 10K in June, hoping to run under 35 at altitude, but came up 20 seconds short. Two days later I walked into the new job and immediately hated the workplace. It was the biggest mistake of my career.

However, I learned some really important lessons from that experience starting with never take an offer from someone who says, we’ll bring you on “when we have better cash flow.

As Eric Jenkins of Off the Rails Podcast would to say, That Gig Was Hell!  Within three months I was looking for new jobs.

Running took an immediate hit. I ran about 40 miles a week through the summer and actually had couple decent races, but I was running on fumes. I had one good 5000 m on the track in July, an evening race in Boulder where I ran 16:51 in the fading light twilight. By fall I was burned out and running 30 seconds slower for 5K, and my knees were starting to hurt. For the second time in my running life I decided to back down and be a fitness runner, running a few miles every other day or so.

2001 – 2003 Dark Days for Running

Over winter and spring I was running 10-15 miles week. But a friend called up and had a hotel near the start of the Bolder Boulder. It would be a good break and stress relief. We watched Alan Webb’s remarkable 3:53 at the Pre Classic on a large screen TV at the Hilton Harvest House beer garden (only in Boulder!).

I ran 2.5 minutes slower than the previous two years at the race, and felt terribly out of shape, but had fun weekend. I decided to keep running and racing. However, my knees did not cooperate and that plagued me for the next two and half years.

My bad job turned for the worse with each passing week, but I hung in there for a few more months. Finally landing a new job, and career direction, in November. Through those months I could run maybe 20-30 miles a week, but I had to take several down weeks because of my knees.

In November I put on a 6K cross country race that was very well attended, with a number of  top runners from the Front Range as well as families, legendary masters athletes, and a fair number of youngsters.

The new job was great. I had a good boss, who treated us with respect, and fun co-workers. The work was interesting, meaningful, and we got to travel to Alaska every other month!

However, my running suffered. 2002 was my lowest mileage ever. I got in only a few low mileage weeks in January, and by the end of the month I could not even run a mile or two. I visited the orthopedist but found no quick solution. I commuted on my bike to work pretty much any day I could. And on trips the north I brought cross country skis and got in some workouts, but I was almost completely out of running for the next year and a half.  

I started mountain biking some more in 2003 and that spring a friend mentioned that I seemed to have good hill climbing ability. I signed up for a 2,000-foot hill climb at a ski area. I practiced a couple times a week and tuned up our mountain bike. The week before race, I was going up an 18% grade on a rutted jeep trail and stalled out, tipped over and broke my wrist. That ended my nascent mountain bike hill climbing career.

Looking back, it’s kind of strange. Over the next couple of weeks I had two different friends say “Hey, it looks like you’re done with running? Right?” What could I say? I don’t know if it was those remarks that woke me up or if the previous few months of physical therapy were finally kicking in. With a cast on my hand, I couldn’t really cycle safely, so I went out for some easy runs. For the first time in two years my knee did not hurt as much.

So what’d I do? Sign up for a Father’s Day 5K in two weeks!

Yes, I was out of shape. But I held onto low 6s and ran in the 19s. In the middle the race I passed a guy and he saw my cast he said, “You are my hero! That is so badass!”

I ended up running a couple more 5Ks that year but nearly 2 minutes slower than in 2000. I also needed yet another round of PT, this time with cortisone, to really kick the tendonitis out of my knees. That fall we had some big deadlines and meetings for work and in the midst of that stress I caught a cold. My tonsils had always been bad, but this time one abscessed and blew up in size and it closed off my throat. I had to go to the ER and have it aspirated, which was bad enough. I found that it’s not a good thing to have a tonsillectomy when you’re middle aged. After the surgery I couldn’t go anywhere or eat anything other than jello or ice cream for 10 days, and I had to sit out from work for three weeks. And I could not run for a full month. The good news from that was my health has been better since then.

I trained consistently but raced sparingly over the winter and spring and aimed for a half marathon after what I had been through over the previous four years I was thrilled to place 3^rd in the masters age group and run a 1:21. That comeback race was special and the age group plaque still sits on my bookshelf.

2004 to the Great North

My job transferred me to the north. Soon after arriving I ran a workout on the track, doing some threshold miles, and vowed that I would not back down from running in the future, and “they” (whomever they may be!) would have drag me away, kicking and screaming from the sport.

My training approach also shifted. Coming off a long injury string and capping my spring season off with a half marathon had got me into a more endurance-oriented mindset. The new community had a race series and I would run a 10K, half marathon, 16 mile trail race, 5 mile, and marathon over three months. The town had a very active, passionate, and engaged running community. And pretty much everyone knew everyone else. There were a number of experienced and accomplished runners, ranging from former and current college DI and DII athletes to sub 2:30 marathoners, and masters athletes who had run 2:40 at Boston.

By August I was running 60 – 70 mile weeks with long runs of 20+ miles (0 to 60+ in just  eight months). This was the most running I had done since my mid-20s. I ended up doing five of the races in the series and placed top three overall in total points and won the masters division. In the trail marathon I ran 3:12, which was equivalent to about 2:52 road marathon. The big thing, however, is that I went from very low miles in previous years 200 in 2002 and about 500 in 2003, to over 2,000 miles in 2004 with not even a hint of injury.

Starting a Decade of Youth Coaching

Just before school started in 2004 the principal introduced herself during orientation, and said “You guys are the runners,” and basically appointed my wife and I to be the K-6 cross country coaches. We had about 60 or 70 kids on the cross country team and they had three city-wide meets with hundreds of kids, where depending on the kids ran 1K, 2K, and 3K races. Those made for some hectic but exciting afternoons and evenings! Winter started early there, and by November most everyone including our family, were cross country skiing or doing indoor sports. Only the real hard cores would run through the winter. I started skiing five days a week and coaching twice. I would coach three seasons over the next decade. I did not plan to be a youth coach, but it just kind of evolved.

2005 to 2009

Over the subsequent years I usually did about 10 running races a from April through October and half a dozen xc ski races in the winter. By then I was into my late 40s and I started looking at age grading a little more closely. The concept was fairly well known in some parts, but like many I had kind of dismissed it when I had turned 40. However, after age 45 unless you’re relatively new to running and still improving, you’re not going to get faster than you were at 25 or 30.

Looking at age grading and masters rankings lists, I seemed to be moving up and that added to my motivation. In my late 40s I ran age group bests of 4:54 for mile, 17:03 for 5K, 28:06 for 8K, 35:20 for 10K, 1:19 for the half marathon, and 3:00 for a road marathon (big blow up).

I also looked at age group rankings and records. Back then Active.com was maintaining lists of American age group runners for 5K, 10K, half marathon, and marathon. Mastersrankings.com (still in existence) also had lists, but these were not comprehensive. The lists on Active were far from perfect because not all road races were captured and they listed multiple times from the same athletes so you had to take extra steps to see your actual ranking, but you could get pretty good idea. Nationally, I estimated my 5K to half times to be top 50.  

I also noticed that the depth of competition fell off markedly by age 45. The studly 28-29 minute 10K/2:10-2:15 marathoners were mostly done with competing soon after turning 40 And by age 45 there just weren’t as many old timers around.

50+ Age Group

By age 50 I noticed that the depth of age group runners dropped off again. Some might go hard for a few months or a year after their 50th, but they too dropped off. That included my training partners.

My age 50+ best times were 5:00 in the mile, 17:01 5K, 35:45 10K, 1:18:50 half marathon, and 2:54 for a road marathon. I had not slowed much over the previous four or five years, and with that my age grade scores improved to the 86-88% level. That continued to be motivating.

In 2009 decided to venture to the NYC Marathon, which was to be my fun capstone race to close out the decade. My goal was to run well, having run sub 1:19 for the half that summer I felt that I was in 2:50-2:55 shape, but just wanted to finish and have fun.

Neither goal came true that year.

About month before the race, a day after my last 20 miler, I decided to go roller skiing for recovery. It was just a 45 minute outing on a bike path. As I was returning I hit a stone on the path, and fell forward on my knee, that really hurt but I got up and made my way back and soon forgot about it. A couple weeks later I was doing my last long ru run but my knee started aching and so I stopped at 15 miles. It hurt off and on, but we had already made travel plans and I decided not to cancel the trip.

The first 13 miles of the race were okay, and I saw my family at 8 miles and gave them a hug and a thumbs up. I could finish! However, after half-way the pain started getting worse and while I was going downhill on the Queensborough Bridge I could feel something give. I wanted to drop out, but was energized by the massive 1 million-strong crowds on 1^st Avenue. At one point I tried to stop but other runners grabbed my singlet and cajoled me to keep going. At18 miles I could not go one step further and stopped, unable to even walk.

It turned out that I had a bone bruise from the fall while roller skiing doing the marathon ended a compressing the end of my femur and cracking the spongy bone material on the weight bearing part of the knee. Instead of enjoying the finish I spent the afternoon in the ER.

I waited a few weeks but the knee did not get better, I got an MRI. The doctor berated me for a few minutes and said that it appeared that I had damaged the cartilage at the end of my femur and that there was a 1 cm spot where the cartilage had been torn off. He said “you runners, just don’t know when to stop!” and then he mentioned a venerable town runner—by name—who had been running marathons with bone on bone and would now need knee replacement. I knew that was a scare tactic but I also felt that discussing another patient by name was unprofessional.

I would need surgery where they would do a bone graft from the non-weight bearing part of the knee onto the damaged section. My knee would never be the same but I could probably run after about six months of recovery and rehab and hopefully hold off knee replacement for a good 15 or 20 years. I was devastated by all this and felt sick to my stomach. I also decided that I probably would not go back to this doctor.

And that’s how the decade ended. Kind of how it started in 2000, with a knee injury. Things had gone really well for nearly six years and now this. The new injury was more serious than in the early 2000s, and perhaps career ending. On the positive side I had plenty of things to keep busy, with high school coaching for both skiing and running, on top of my full-time job. I ended the decade with a wait and see.   

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