I found this book a refreshingly different (to me) take on how best to train in order to improve your running performance. Ben Rosario is an olympic coach, and Matt Fitzgerald a runner and author. The book comes after Fitzgerald spent three months training with the athletes Rosario was coaching at his club, Hoka NAZ Elite. Although not himself an elite athlete, Fitzgerald wanted to train as if he were and to learn from the experience.
There is an account of the experience itself in another book; this one is a training guide informed by what happened. I picked it up because I was interested in the theory behind what is sometimes called 80/20 running – the idea that 80% of runs should be low intensity – which Fitzgerald advocated in his 2015 book of that title.
This 2022 book continues to advocate 80/20 running though there is a lot more here than that. The central thought is that many recreational runners (meaning most of us) train badly and could improve by learning from how elite runners train. Although we are slower and have less time available, the same principles apply to elite and non-elite runners alike, the authors argue, so why not learn from the pros?
Run Like a Pro consists of 14 chapters, the last five of which are training plans and explanations. Each chapter is by Fitzgerald, but followed by a few pages of “Coach’s tip” by Rosario, at least that is how I think the dual authorship works. The tips are good, by the way, and its’s good to have these two distinct voices.
Chapter 4 particularly interested me, as this is where the 80/20 principle is explained. I was surprised by how precise it is. The authors describe the “first ventilatory threshold,” or VT, defined as “the lower of two distinct exercise intensities at which the rate of oxygen consumption abruptly spikes.” There are various ways to calculate this, such as a 4 out of 10 perceived effort, but an example given helps us to get a feel for it. Someone who runs a 45 minute 10K, the authors say, which is 7:15/mile or 4:30/km, would have a VT of 9:49/mile or 6:06/km. According to the book, 80% of such a person’s running should be at or below the VT, but typically is not, “and that’s a problem.”
Various pieces of research are quoted, such as a study of 30 club runners in which half stuck to 80/20, and half did a more common pattern of moderate intensity training. Both groups improved their 10K time, but the 80/20 group improved by 5% and the other by 3.5%. A small study, but the book claims that “other research has yielded similar results.”
Food for thought; but there is plenty more here even if you are unsure about 80/20. There are chapters on pacing, managing mileage, balancing intensities, running form, nutrition, and the mental aspect of running.
One thing that made an impression on me is in the pacing chapter, where the authors advocate a “fastest last mile rule.” The idea is that slowing down towards the end of a long run is a bad habit; in fact, “any running you do after you’ve started slowing down involuntarily offers no benefit,” they say. “Beyond that point you are no longer training, you are punishing yourself.”
A further consequence of running to exhaustion is that injury risk increases.
Is there really no benefit to running after fatigue has made you slow down? The question provoked a lively discussion on Reddit’s Advanced Running forum.
The chapter on running form includes a series of exercises, some of which involve weights or a stability ball. I intend to try some of these as I am fully convinced of the value of strength training for runners.
The training plans cover distances from 5K to ultramarathon, each with 3 levels, for beginner, intermediate and advanced. You have to do a bit of work to translate the plans into workouts. 11 levels of intensity are defined, from easy to very high intensity. Then I counted 18 different types of runs, along with drills, stride and plyometric workouts, and a general reference to cross-training. Following a plan therefore means figuring out exactly what is required, based on descriptions like “Run 15:00 easy, drills and strides 5 x (4:00 @CV/2:00 easy), 15:00 easy.”
This is a great book for runners, well-written and easy to ready, and I think anyone determined to train better will get something useful from it.
Run like a Pro (Even if you’re slow) by Matt Fitzgerald and Ben Rosario