Keeping your running simple

Everybody enjoys a successful racing or training experience. Sometimes these experiences come after careful planning and are the realisation of a life long dream. There are also occasions when the performance was an unexpected lightning flash of brilliance -something that you may never repeat. The thrill of personal success is very rewarding and can propel us to ever-tougher training regimes. It can re-invigorate our mental and physical energies and help us to aim for an even higher level of performance.

It would be wonderful if we could reproduce these experiences on demand but there are times when we just have to accept that it is just not our day. You may decide to take advice from experts but this could be confusing; one coach might extol the benefits of high mileage, another stressing the importance of intervals. Is your training wrong? You now have a wealth of information at your fingertips: journals, magazines, internet chatlines, but sorting the kernel from the chafe requires skill. The phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" is a cautionary reminder that not every piece of training wisdom is well conceived or suitable for you.

You seem to have more questions than answers: which training technique should have the greatest emphasis in your training? Intervals, aerobic conditioning, or anaerobic threshold training? Should you rely on your natural talent or work tirelessly on your technique? Should you read and try to copy the training logs of successful athletes?

Pretty soon your head is whirring with ideas and rather than finding a path to improvement; you are actually lacking direction. Sports psychologists might suggest that you are in a state of "analysis - paralysis."

Attention to detail in race preparation has often been associated with the professionalism of an elite runner. However, the danger in over-analysing every single possible risk, benefit, tactic, counter tactic etc, is that you can actually stop competing. You become too busy thinking and not concentrating on 'doing-it.’ The phrase "the devil is in the detail,” can be counter-intuitive in running performance. It may be tempting to plan for every eventuality -believing that you can bring all aspects of the race and your performance under your control but the reality is that this never happens.

Rather than being a source of comfort and confidence, I knew an athlete who became anxious when there was variance in one of the race details that he thought he controlled. The logic should be that every athlete would like to control the race; why should your plan be the infallible one? Interviews with successful runners reveal that they understand that any race plan is a fluid set of constructs moulded around ever-changing conditions.

So how do you find direction when your mind seems unsure as to where to go? The locker- room "keep it simple stupid" (the KISS approach) is a crass reminder that our sport is fundamentally a natural expression of movement. It is play and is meant to be fun. Children understand the simplicity of play and don't need complicated rules to dictate its flow. As adults we easily lose our way by examining, analysing and trying to synthesise massive amounts of information in the hope that it will make us a better runner.

It almost seems paradoxical that an athlete can often improve by returning to simplicity; "getting back to basics" as it is known in the vernacular. Albert Schweitzer, the great humanitarian and scientist, once wrote: "We move from naive simplicity to profound simplicity." Certainly you should use your knowledge of training to help guide you on your path to improved performances, but emphasise the simplicity of it all. Have fun; stop worrying about details and the outcome. Have fun (it's worth repeating!) and enjoy your inevitable return to form.