Philosophy

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Attitude

Coaching should be holistic. Since every aspect of your life impacts your running, and your potential for healthy improvement is a function of whatever else is going on in your life, I take a big-picture view of your running and how it fits into your life. Training is designed around the fact that your are first, a person, secondly, an athlete, third, a runner, and fourth, a trail or road runner.

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My goal first and foremost is to help make running a rewarding and enriching part of your life.

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Process

Key Features:

• Massive gains are made by compounding small improvements over time, not through epic workouts, so leaving a bit in the tank after each session allows you to, as Tom Schwartz would say, "keep the ball rolling."

• Each athlete is armed with principles to make effective on-the-spot decisions reflective of the training plan, even when the coach's opinion isn't available, or the unexpected happens.

• Running in the mountains is very dynamic and athletic, yet quality of movement is largely neglected in trail running training - we will learn to move well as athletes, and then translate that movement practice into more efficient and powerful running.

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Methodology/Structure

Alpenglow's training is all about sustainable aerobic volume, with an emphasis on improving your efficiency, as these are the two most high leverage knobs we have to turn, and ones we can keep turning into years and years of compounding improvement. You can expect lots of easy miles, and an emphasis on effortless, fluid speed. Specifically, the methodology is a heavy dose of David Roche, with influences from Scott Johnston, Renato Canova, and Tom Schwartz.

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Science

Charts, effect sizes, shamelessly citing your own papers... the scientist in me is salivating already. Although I come from a formal science background, this doesn't mean that I base everything off of the latest paper that comes out! Why not? Because understanding a study is one thing, but placing that study into context and evaluating its weak points, main conclusions, and applicability is even more important. This is by far the most important skill that I have honed in my formal science training. Exercise physiology studies are great and critically important, but "overfitting" to the latest new paper is rarely useful. There is a big difference between understanding what a particular study is really teaching us, and employing particular protocols used in a study in training.

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