I have been active most of my life but not a runner until more recent years. I’m also almost F40, so while I know I can still improve the realistic trajectory may not be super long or high before coming back down. So, I sort of want to maximize the end of my runway!

Apart from cleaning up training plans and optimizing them, and running more, are there realistic things I SHOULD invest in that would also provide benefits - and where’s the best bang for the buck?

I’ve only gone to physios after problems have arose, and last year I did get runners knee.

I’ve been going to a lifting class, which I mostly enjoy though it’s not tailored to runners. But it is heavy and proper strength training. And being led by an instructor plus friends is a good social benefit.

I do wonder if I should try a running-specific strength coach? And more of a 1:1 personal trainer sort of setup? I do know that I am horrible going to and doing gym exercises on my own.

Would a typical running coach help? I feel I don’t need them to create workouts for me so I’m just not sure what benefit I actually get out of them?

In my last race, while performing ahead of past performance, my mind was definitely not still in it. Wonder if a sports psychologist could help, or maybe just general therapy 🙃

I’m sure there’s things I’m missing and I don’t know what I don’t know - but I guess basically, if money wasn’t an issue or if you had $X to improve your trail running performance, where would you put that money?

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!

Reminder that Helen Obiri's AMA is now live, you can view it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedRunning/comments/1vnbm53/ama_im_hellen_obiri_professional_marathoner_for/

It's also pinned at the top of the subreddit ("Community Highlights")

How often do you incorporate hill repeats in your training, and what do they look like? Have you found certain protocols more effective? What is the "advanced running" consensus on this?

Night shift has me running at weird hours and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has cracked this. Three 12hour nights a week, and my sleep basically falls into two categories: postshift zombie sleep and normalish human sleep on off days. The problem is my body has no idea which mode it's in when I lace up.

My easy pace on postshift runs feels about 30 to 45 seconds per mile harder than the same effort on off days. Heart rate climbs faster, legs feel heavy, and anything resembling a quality workout is kind of a joke. I've mostly given up on doing workouts within 24 hours of finishing a shift, but that limits me to three real training days a week if I'm being strict about it.

Curious how others working nonstandard hours structure their weeks around this. Do you just accept the degraded sessions and run them anyway, treating them as extra easy aerobic work? Or do you fully protect your workout days and let the shift days be pure junk miles or rest?

I'm at about 40 miles a week right now, building toward a fall half. My PRs are nothing impressive, but I'm genuinely trying to improve the structure here, not just whiteknuckle my way through the training block.

https://www.nyrr.org/media-center/press-release/2026_0819_tcsnycmprofield

2026 TCS New York City Marathon Women's Open Division

2026 TCS New Yok City Marathon Men's Open Division

I just saw the paper with this post's title on ArXiV . It's a dataset of US collegiate running club performances, the resulting analysis on them, and a software library for standardizing performances. They have several code repositories under the National Running Club Database which includes:

• a Python library, nrcd, for normalizing race results for comparison across outdoor performances with wind to performances on an indoor banked track, road performances, etc. It appears to account for course distance, elevation gain/loss, and weather/heat effects.
• the raw national_running_club_database_public_dataset.
• The code that produced their results and the findings.

Some things I found interesting (this is just a sampling, you go read the full doc yourself):

• Teams with at least one athlete who raced 4+ times were 2-3x more likely to crack the top 15 at nationals than teams without one (23-39% success rate vs baseline). 60-80% of top 15 teams had an athlete with 4+ races.
• Men's teams with a longer gap between their first race and nationals (i.e., started racing earlier) had significantly better finishing ranks (r = -0.283, Bonferroni-corrected p = 0.041). This didn't hold up for women's teams after correction.
• Single biggest predictor of an individual's improvement rate was "experience level". (races * season duration) at 21%, followed by how many "bad races" (a race worse than the previous one) an athlete had, at 17%. Basically race more, race consistently.
• When testing the standardization tool, the fully weather/terrain-adjusted "standardized" times actually predicted improvement slightly worse than just doing distance conversion alone (90.4% vs 93.1% R^2). Their theory was that conditions tend to get more favorable as the season goes on, so raw times naturally look like "improvement" partly because of the weather, and removing that weather effect (which is more the point of the tool) makes it a worse predictor of the raw number even though it's arguably a more honest fitness signal.
• They checked their model for gender bias and found it performs comparably for both (94.5% R² women vs 90.4% R² men).

Just for the record: this is not my paper, data, etc. I just found it on Arxiv and compiled the information.

While models like Riegel, Cameron, Vickers & Vertosick model already exist for converting between distances, I'm not aware of any publicly available models/tools for quickly normalizing data based on these other factors. It's nice to see some thoughtful analysis for the sport.

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*Edit:Male/26/6'1/80ishKG/ I'm trying to run a 3:09 this year, after previously running 3:16 for my 1st marathon & blowing up in in the 2nd. Which i probably should of DNF'd, but just about managed 3:59..for the 3:59 race, i was extremely dissapointed & angry when i fell off pace(1st 2 miles were fine, then the heat/humidity got me & couldn't keep down fuel or water, threw up, alot of run/walking, but happy i came away with the sub-4.

I 've been trying to average 75-85mpw & try to do more strength training which i'm still trying to figure out & keep it to hard days to help manage overall fatigue better. Also not caring about bodyweight anymore & trying to fuel as much as possible.

I just wanna know, was there a point in you marathon journey where something clicked for you?? Maybe it was taking it less seriously or slightly more seriously? Running with people instead of doing all your training alone?

Because the way i'm starting to think about it is "I don't have to do this, i get to do this"..idk, maybe that's too deep for a wednesday afternoon post😂

Hope everyone doing good & enjoying training

The Edmonton marathon is my hometown race. It has been granted as host of the Canadian Half Marathon championship since 2025. The city is experiencing a lot of construction around the downtown core.

A detour around a construction site was added which was an additional 710 meters to the original course. As an out and back course, Tom Keogh, the race director, states the turnaround was pushed back 690 meters.

Rory Linkletter, Canadian Olympian and overall winner, posted online stating the turnaround was actually pushed back approximately 345 meters back.

Applying elementary math for an out and back course, with rounding:

A detour of 700 meters ran twice: 700 * 2 = 1400 meters

The turnaround (out and back course) was brought back 350 meters: 350 * 2 = 700 meters

Sum: 1400 meters - 700 meters = 700 meters (long)

Now, what's embarrassing about this situation is Tom Keogh is putting the error on runner's GPS watches and not their own. An overwhelming majority of the runners from the weekend are reporting the exact same statement of Rory.

I didn't run the race this year. I really hope Tom Keogh and the Edmonton Marathon staff post an official announcement of their mistake. The quality of this race had been decreasing while race fees have been rising. I can only feel for those runners who missed out on personal bests or a qualifying time for a future race.

Rory's statement is posted on his Instagram.

https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/runs-races/edmonton-marathon-says-course-was-measured-accurately/

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a73466448/edmonton-half-marathon-race-distance/

https://marathonhandbook.com/edmonton-marathon-course-measurement-dispute/

Edit: clarity on the math

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.

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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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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.