The Running Public

Carol Pratt is a running coach who has seen and done it all throughout her career:

• Part of the first female high school class to have equal access to sports
• Witnessed the rise of Title IX
• Ran D-1 Track 
• Ironman Finisher
• 2x Boston Marathon Qualifier
• Created a girl's high school cross country program
• High School, Club, and Masters Running Coach

The age old debate for endurance sports is one of size. At what point does extra power or strength begin to get in the way of your speed and endurance? This question is often paired with its less healthy sibling: How small is too small? We discuss this in depth today in hopes of helping you frame your mindset for what is ideal for your body.

So often we hear, "I've been running for 3 years now and I'm just not getting any better. I think I've hit my ceiling." Endurance sports are the LONG game, and it is important to keep your personal progression in perspective. Brakken and Kirk walk us through their Running Progression today in order to show how difficult it can be to know what phase you're in until afterwards! They trade stories and anecdotes back and forth that remind us of a few important facts:

1. We track fitness in DECADES, not years or months.
2. When we stagnate, that doesn't mean we've hit our ceiling.
3. We need to be in the correct room.

We've all seen it: a guy or girl we know who is SUPER fit shows up to a competition and just gets smoked. How is this possible? What is the missing link between great overall workout fitness and great race day fitness?

Army Ranger. National Level Ultra Runner. Collegiate Basketball Player. And most impressively, the winner of the 2020 Running Public Burpee 10k! Mark is one of the best unknown racers in the US, and today will shed some light on how he got to be the man and athlete he is!

We've hit a lot of heavy topics lately, so today we're lightening things up with a rundown of our absolute favorite workouts! From track workouts and interval sessions to threshold work and long runs, we break down a ton of great workouts today.

Some really good questions came in this month! Some highlights are:

• How important is talent?
• Why does my HR go up on Easy days when I try a higher cadence?
• How often to hit race specific terrain?
• Is rucking useful to endurance racers?
• Active Recovery Days vs Off Days
• Road paces vs OCR paces

"We don't train so that the race doesn't hurt, we train to tolerate it." - Michael Scott, probably. 

 

Far too often, we improve our fitness and then go into a competition imagining how awesome we are going to feel, only to get smacked in the face by how much racing still hurts. Today's episode deals with every aspect of that, from mindset and mental tricks, to race strategy and training focus.

We spend the first 25 minutes talking all about the Running Public Training Plan that dropped today on therunningpublic.com. We explain the set-up and training style as well as how to use the plan. If you want to skip straight to the meat and potatoes of this episode, fast forward to 25:00.

Bailey is the newest face on the world mountain and trail running scene. She only shifted to the trails in 2019 but has already established herself as the woman to watch in the coming years. Today she details her journey from child prodigy to stagnated race times, an eating disorder, unhealthy coaches and finally to personal health and competitive excellence!

Online Coaching is one of the easiest ways for people to start making money quickly. The fitness industry is overrun with bad coaching, and the Running community (OCR in particular) is not immune to this. If anything, it is worse than most other industries. Way too many unqualified coaches are taking advantage of unsuspecting clients.

Warning: Today is one giant rant. We identify the key pieces to look for in order to ensure you are finding a good coach and we identify the classic tactics used by bad coaches. We finish by shouting out the coaches we know are doing it right!