David Chalfen - Improve your marathon and half marathon running

IMPROVE YOUR MARATHON AND HALF MARATHON RUNNING

David Chalfen

Foreword by Bud Baldaro

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2012 by
The Crowood Press Ltd
Ramsbury, Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-Book first published in 2014

David Chalfen 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 962 9

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

David Chalfen is wonderfully well placed to write a book on marathon and half-marathon training. I have known Dave for many years and in that time have never failed to be impressed by his thirst for knowledge of a sport he loves profoundly.

As a coach for many years at club, student and area/international level, Dave certainly knows his stuff. He has been a student of the sport for numerous years and is a true aficionado of the road scene. Passionate and inspired by runners of all ability levels, he brings to the table a life-long love of the sport combined with a depth of knowledge and the ability to develop his points in a rational, accessible and comprehensible manner. He possesses a genuine insight into both the needs of runners and their patient progression, plus of course the very specific demands of the events.

Well planned and well written, this addition to the lore of road running will add significantly to required reading. The book is refreshingly honest and realistic, conveying well Daves desire to see runners of all levels realize their full potential. I have no doubt that many runners and coaches will benefit tremendously from Daves keenness and passion and above all the directness of his knowledge, so well presented in this book.

This book makes for happy and stimulating reading ensure that you put into practice these good ideas.

Bud Baldaro
Former UK Athletics Marathon coach and personal coach to Hannah England, World Championships Silver medallist in 2011 and to many British international runners

To Rosa, a most wonderful daughter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Chalfen has been coaching endurance running for over a decade and has been running for more than thirty years. He is a Level 4 Performance UKA Coach and is an Area Endurance Coach Mentor for England Athletics, developing the endurance coaching network in North London and Hertfordshire. He has coached numerous distance runners ranging from national level to modest club level, and operates both as a volunteer coach as a member of Serpentine Running Club and via a website www.runcoach1to1.com. He has also acted as Team Manager for various international athletes at major marathons in Europe and Asia and has written feature articles about endurance running for Athletics Weekly. He competed at County level and ran ten marathons under 2 hours 35 minutes, with a best of 2.32. He lives in London. He was educated in North London and at Oxford University. This is his first book.

PREFACE

I was sitting in an Internet caf in the hills in Andalucia when I received the email equivalent of a cold call from Crowood inviting me to write this book. My first reaction was one of suspicion akin to receiving an email from a West African bank enquiring after my mothers maiden name and asking to verify my Internet banking password. But it was bona fide and many thanks to Crowood editor Hannah Shakespeare for her faith in adding my name to the endurance writing publications list.

At the risk of self-aggrandisement, or perhaps just showing that Im an embarrassingly slow learner, the knowledge and experience that has gone into this book has been almost forty years in the making. The first seeds were sown in 1972 when as a very shy eight-year-old I watched the 1972 Olympics from Munich. Amidst the British highlights and the deadly intrusion of the terrorist attacks on the Israeli team, it was the long-distance races that stuck in my mind. Finnish legend Lasse Virn achieving the 5,000m and 10,000m double on the track, and the wiry USA runner Frank Shorter coming home for a dominant marathon win had a key role in triggering the growth of long-distance running in the Western world. I thought it looked very exciting and wanted to be part of it. And so started my fascination with long-distance running.

By a mixture of luck and design, this brought me into some hotbeds of endurance running. My very first tentative track sessions at Shaftesbury Harriers in north-west London were done with one lane kept aside whilst the then World Record Holder for 10,000m, Dave Bedford, went through sessions trying to recapture his 1973 glory days. I progressed and was able to wear the Barnet Schools vest with some pride but little competence.

Through my later teens I persisted with a stable level of mediocrity. The typical scenario was that if I beat another Under 17 or Under 20 athlete they would see retirement from the sport and in a couple of extreme cases emigrating to South America with an entirely new identity as the only logical option to preserve some vestiges of self-respect. At University I could just about describe future World Cup Marathon Champion and 2.08 marathon performer Richard Nerurkar as a training partner on those days when his recovery run and my threshold effort happened to coincide.

To show how the marathon world has changed, I ran my first marathon just before turning eighteen. In an event that wasnt even classified as an official competitive event, I placed forty-second in a time of 2hr 42min. Thirty years on, there is no race in Britain outside the mighty London Marathon where this sort of time would place so relatively far down the field.

Typical of many coaches, it was only after stopping my own competitive running (well, as competitive as my short stumpy legs and overzealous engagement with Mr Kiplings exceedingly good cakes could manage) that I acquired the objectivity to drill down into the details of how to really optimize ones endurance-running ability, whatever level that ability is. Its a clich that is only partly true, but distance running is in many ways the easiest sport to do just put on your kit, head out the door and run, sometimes hard and sometimes easy, and if you do this very regularly you will improve considerably. However, its also just as easy to become a regularly injured runner or an underachieving runner. Indeed, most experienced runners will at different stages encounter both situations and the goal which I hope this book will contribute to is to ensure that the large majority of ones running years are spent achieving the best results that are achievable for each individuals ability and training commitment.

My time so far in coaching has been supported by all of the following who contribute to the immense enjoyment we gain from the fulfilling yet existentially futile attempts to help people run a long way a little bit quicker than the last time they tried it:

In particular, Bud Baldaro and Geoff Williams, great motivators and special people who have such a lasting and positive influence on so many. And they also help them to run faster. Outside the running world, Kevin Hickey MBE has been a tremendously wise and supportive mentor and adviser on the broader aspects of sports coaching.

Also my friend and clubmate Urban Bettag, a master of constructive criticism. And Bev Kitching; Stella Bandu; Dave Newport; Martin Rush; Peter McHugh; Nick Anderson; Dave Sunderland; Bryan Smith; and Ian Ladbrooke.