Runners competing in a 10,000m race in Eldoret, Kenya |
A coach is obviously someone who has had past experience as a runner or has spent many years studying the art of running and every aspect of it. He knows the best steps for you to gradually transform into a faster runner without feeling the pain or putting in a lot of useless efforts. A coach knows how to blend different workouts to achieve the desired goal.
You may spend many years of hard training, only to realize after almost ten years that you would have achieved much more with your running if only you had known some things when you started. A coach, through their experience in running and in coaching other runners will quickly take you ten years into the future in your training. Improver training is not only inefficient but causes injuries and illnesses, among others.
Doing every workout at the right pace is perhaps the ultimate remedy for a perfect training and race. A coach is not only there to push you to run harder, but even more importantly, to run slower when necessary. There are some runs that need to be run slowly in order to reap the best out of them.
Coaches are always determined and eager to get good results from their runners.
“If only I would turn back to be as young as you are right now, I would break the world record!” I overheard a coach once telling his runners. A coach always sees great potential in their runners and any success that the runners achieve always makes the coach very proud.