The title of this week’s article comes from a quote inside Julie Diben’s blog. I’ve been trying to get Julie to come and talk at one of our camps but have not (yet) been successful. I will keep trying because I have tremendous respect for her!

At our last Boulder Camp, I was successful with Rinny, Angela Neath and Bobby McGee. This is a summary of the best ideas that I picked up from them.

Athlete Type
Consider if you are more prone to burnout or prone to injury.

This could vary by sport and will change as you develop as an athlete.

Rinny’s never been injured so it’s important for her to schedule recovery — she does this by breaking her season into three parts: Base, Race and Specific Prep for Kona. Base and Race end with a complete week off and she takes two weeks off after Kona.

Angela’s found that intense training, especially running, breaks her down. To maintain her ability to train, her races are her “hard training.”

Summing up: schedule recovery when healthy and pay attention to what breaks you down.

Runner Type
Bobby asked us to consider what type of runner we were:

• Athletic – Tending to fade more as the duration increased
• Endurance – Having the capacity to shuffle for a long time at a similar speed

Athletic runners benefit from all forms of volume: walk, hiking, jogging and running. They need to be extremely careful with faster paced work, as it will break them down, for little race benefit.

Endurance runners will handle mileage, as well as intensity, much better.

For ironman, the amount of “fade” from half to full distance will give a clear indication if an athlete is athletic- or endurance-biased.

When you overlay your injury risk to Bobby’s runner types, you can assess the risk:reward profile of your run training.

Going Big
Every elite has a story of when they went too far and warns of the risks. The lesson that I take is that, as a class, elite athletes all go too far!

Despite any message of moderate, elites embrace extreme training. Racing hurts and if you want to race well then you need to condition your mind.

What makes the athletes that survive at the top different is they learn from their mistakes and take steps to avoid repeating them.

Learn from what breaks you down and create systems to make you an intelligent athlete.

When you beast yourself, learn from the experience.