The second biggest difference between successful amateur runners and non-successful amateur runner

I have been coaching amateur runners all over the world. And in Japan March is almost the end of the month of marathon season because from April on, it gets hotter clearly except some cold places.

So, most runners finish their marathon races by the end of March. In Japan, Ekiden races and marathon races are most popular sports. And for amateur adult runners, almost only full marathon is the only long distance running.

Even if you run 5000m under 15 minutes, normal people cannot understand how great it is. While if you run a full marathon under 4 hours, all your colleagues and neighbors congratulate you. Based on this culture, most Japanese adult amateur runners focus on full marathon races and that’s why from February to March, I analyze tons of amateur runners’ training history. If I spend same amount of energy and time on analyzing Japanese history, I would become one of the greatest Japanese history researchers, I’m sure.

But my destination is analyzing adult Japanese marathoners training history which is good for me, by the way.

And I figured out the second biggest difference between successful amateur runners and non-successful amateur runners.

I don’t beat around the bush anymore. That is, whether they recovered well from their training or not, especially hard workouts.

If I say this, many people think ‘Ahh OK, so, there was no tapering period or they didn’t taper enough’.

Well, that is a part of the answer. But not all of the answers.

What I mean here is, comparing their recovery ability and their total internal training load, their total internal training load is higher than their recovery ability and that’s why overcompensation didn’t occur.

Let me explain some words very quickly.

First of all, let me explain the difference between internal training load and external training load. The external training load is something which we can describe by number, in other words, something we can express mathematically or physically.

For example, 20km run at 3 minutes per kilometer pace is external training load. Even if I do it or Eliud Kipchoge does it, it has the same amount of the external training load.

While the internal training load is very different. If I do that, it’s the maximal effort, and probably it requires 7 easy days including no running days to recover fully. While one easy day is enough for Eliud Kipchoge to recover fully because the pace is 10 seconds per kilometer slower than his full marathon race pace and approximately 18 seconds per kilometer slower than his half marathon race pace. Meaning, the internal training load is very different.

This is the difference between the internal training load and the external training load.

The next thing I need to explain is overcompensation.

We human beings adapt to many stimuluses. The most typical thing is language. If you were born in Germany and used German from the very young age, you adapt to German perfectly and if you were born in Japan and started using Japanese from 0 year old, you adapt to Japanese language perfectly.

But if we do not recover well after a certain stimulus was put on us, we cannot adapt to the stimulus.

Meaning, only training is not enough, but also we need to recover well from training. Also, this is the reason why professional runners are faster than us amateur runners. As long as we keep working, it is more difficult to recover well from training. And also historically speaking, the world record got faster and faster after the time of professional runners came.

I also have a female friend who is running as a professional although exactly speaking, she is running as a normal worker on a paper. As you guys know, Japan is the only successful communism country. We cannot call her a professional runner officially.

Anyway, since recovery is very important, after we have lunch together, I always kick her ass and send her to the home to get her take a nice rest after fueling her up. I’m in charge only paying for her lunch and say good bye.

Long story short, if you don’t recover well from your training, you cannot get faster, period.

Also, this is the reason why moderate run and easy run are so effective. Since moderate run and easy run are not hard, you can recover from moderate run and easy run easily, meaning you can adapt to these training easily and that’s why you can run faster easily.

I have a client who is 52 years old female amateur runner who works as a sergeant. She likes to run a lot with slow pace. I also taught her hard runs, Fartlek, interval workouts etc. However, she wants to run 600km a month. So, mainly she focuses on easy runs. And the result? She ran full marathon 3:18. She appreciated me so much because she got faster by doing non-maximal effort workouts.

Also, in the past one of my clients who were male and still mid 40s. He also ran 600km a month mostly with easy runs. I taught him some supplemental speed workouts and short Fartlek, long runs. But he didn’t do hard workouts much. And boom he ran under 2:40.

But I don’t deny that these are radical cases.

Most my clients run only 70-100km a week, in other words, around 300km a month. 10km a day average is not a lot if running is your habit, right?

By the way, first things first I teach a beginner is not training but creating habit of running because once it becomes your habit, it’s easy to keep doing it. You start running without thinking about it. Rather, if you don’t run, you feel bad or you feel like missing something important in your life.

Your brain neurons completely change. The reason why a lot of people cannot quit alcohol, cigarette, gamble, porn etc is also because their brain neurons completely changed. If you create a good habit, your life gets better while if you create a bad habit, your life gets worse. I’m sure, if you create a habit of running, your life gets better. An angry dude gets ease and a lazy person gets self-disciplined.  

Anyway, although I put a lot of hard workouts in their training program, the total internal training load should not be higher than their recovery ability and also, they need to increase their recovery ability in the fundamental period.

This is also a thing that a lot of amateur runners miss out. They don’t even know the concept of recovery ability. However, they know that the older you get, the slower you recover based on experiences.

But, most people don’t know that you can train your recovery ability and improve it just like muscles.

If you increase your recovery ability, you can adapt to hard workouts more and you can run faster. While if your recovery ability is low, you cannot adapt to hard workouts and you cannot run faster, rather you run slower often by doing hard workouts.

This is the second biggest difference between successful amateur runners and non-successful amateur runners.

Let me summarize the second biggest difference.

Frist, they planed their training program too hard, especially hard workouts are too hard.

Second, their recovery ability is too low.

Third, their internal load was too high outside of running. For example, their work was so hard, their children were buried by other bad boys, they could not sleep well, they drunk too much etc.

That’s it folks, I hope this article helps you a lot.

Lastly, if you haven’t read my blog post ‘The biggest difference between successful amateur runners and non-successful amateur runners, please click here to read it. It’ll help you a lot too.