Brian’s Blog
Reflections on a wide range of topics related to endurance training.
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Understanding Fitness Walking
As a subject, fitness walking is more complex than many people realize. I’m interested in addressing the huge cohort of non-walkers who don’t know what true fitness walking means, and how it can contribute radically to their health and well-being. Avid walkers...
The Case for Fitness Walking as We Get Older
The older we get, the more we think about how little time we have. The 70- to 90-year-olds I know already have longevity. But as we enter our final 10 or 20 years, quality of life becomes an issue, especially as it affects our capacity to live independently. I’m told...
Starting a Fitness Walking Regimen
I’ve remained in business as a fitness trainer since 1979 largely because I know how to slow people down. Walkers who want to learn how to jog, for instance, incorrectly assume their jogging pace should be faster than their walking pace. But jogging requires more...
The Energy Considerations of Fitness Walking
Gauging your body’s energy is the first thing you should do when you begin a walking workout. Do you have little, some, or ample energy? The more energy you have, the more you may need to burn so you sleep well that night. In this sense, you’re in partnership with...
A Buddhist Perspective on Life
We go through life day by day, hour by hour having experiences and encountering other people. There’s nothing necessarily special to distinguish one day from another. An event occurs and we make up a story about it. The story could be happy or sad. But inevitably we...
A Moment in Time
I’m interested in exploring the moment-in-time experience. We ordinarily think of time as progressing from past to present to future. But when you think about it, past and future exist only as memory and rehearsal. Outside of mind, past and future don’t exist. What...
Making Peace with the Monkey Mind
Do you ever sit in silence and pay attention to your mind? The mind is a reality show, reflecting your past, present, and future in fascinating detail. Unprompted, it goes about its business of shedding light into every corner of your life. You needn’t do anything,...
On Being Time
Time is one of those things most of us don’t have enough of in our busy lives. We are “slammed” with so many things to do that we can’t conceive of adding more to a day. As a result, we rush through things we must do so we can do the things we want to do. We live on a...
The Zen of Faith
An acquaintance has sponsored alcoholics on their journey from addiction to sobriety for more than thirty years. She claims the second of the twelve steps is the most difficult for those who have already admitted they are powerless over alcohol. Step two says:...
The Zen of Flow
If you were to sit all day without movement and outer stimulation, your mind would eventually slow down. You might find the prospect boring compared with the allure of the outer world. But when I was young, I wanted to discover what lay beyond the twice-a-day,...
Polishing the Zen Mirror
The mind is like a mirror that reflects what’s going on in one’s life: past, present, and future. To sit in silence is to watch ongoing reflections of life in the outer world, including its many facets, nooks, and crannies. This is an important life metaphor.In...
My First Foray into Coaching Marathoners
I started training marathoners in 1979 at the height of the running boom. I had run the mile under nationally famous Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon so I was arrogant enough to think I could train long distance runners. I was recently “retired” from seven...
Hitting the Wall in the Marathon
In 2009, 124 athletes from my BC Endurance marathon training finished the Honolulu Marathon. Of that number, 48% were slowing or crashing in the final segment—from 30K to 42K. It was a hot year, but that wasn’t why they slowed or crashed. “Slowing” and “crashing” are...
Five Ways to Finish a Marathon
This is the last of three articles introducing an in-depth series on the topic of pacing marathons. This article continues a description of my coaching background, starting in 1979 as a rookie professional coach and marathon program director. In the early years, most...
How to Pace the Marathon without Crashing
In the second article in this series on pacing the marathon, I described the Honolulu Marathon Clinic as being my main programmatic competition in the early 1980s when I first started training athletes for the Honolulu Marathon. Thirty years later, the Clinic, under...
Using GPS to Solve the Pacing Problem
There have been several technological breakthroughs during my coaching career. The first was the heart rate monitor, which gave an accurate and objective measure of exertion. The second was the GPS monitor, which gave an accurate measure of pace in real time. In my...
What’s a Realistic Marathon Goal Pace?
Previous articles in this series describe the best way to pace a marathon without a crashing slowdown. Certain principles stand out: do the first 10K at least three percent slower than a realistic goal pace. And do not be faster than one percent of that pace through...
How to Estimate Your Marathon Ability
2013 was a pivotal year in my quest to get BC Endurance athletes through the marathon without crashing. By 2013, I knew how to develop a mile-by-mile pacing plan, but the goal that still eluded me was to accurately estimate an athlete’s ability pace.For a mile-by-mile...
Is there Hope for me in Marathoning?
All athletes are limited by their God-given talent. Some are naturally gifted; others will never be elite. Nonetheless, anyone can improve within limits. Here are some things you can do to become a better marathoner in the context of our annual training program.
The Right Training Distance for the Marathon
The first practice race scheduled in the BC Endurance marathon training is the Windward 25K (15.5 miles). It comes a mere seven weeks into the training when our longest workout will have been only 2.5 hours long. So, many of our athletes wonder how they can finish 15...
Mastering Pre-Race Mental Preparation
Everything we do in life is preceded by a private, mental conversation. In the weeks before a marathon, for example, your thoughts could represent competing ways of pacing the race, e.g., start fast or slow. Your thinking always decides the issue.You could be...
Prepare to Race in Hot Weather
One of my associates from the early 1980s, Alan Titchenal, was an experienced and wily marathoner. On the occasional days when the Honolulu Marathon was run in particularly hot and humid conditions, Alan would start the race at a deliberately slow pace, letting most...
Nutrition Guidelines for Long-Distance Races
The following guidelines assume you are preparing for an early-morning race in hot-weather Hawaii.Storing Glycogen Energy (carbohydrate loading). Glycogen, a form of muscle sugar which derives from carbohydrate (starchy foods) is the limiting factor in long-distance...
Run the Marathon without Hitting the Wall
Pacing is the most important skill in the sport of long-distance racing. Go too fast at any point in a race and you increase your risk of a fatigue-induced, crashing slow-down before the finish. Go too slow and you risk the equally ignominious embarrassment of a...
A BC Endurance Pre-Race Checklist
Experienced runners usually have a pre-and post-race routine, including the following checklist of race day items they’ll need to feel comfortable before and after the race. Race Clothes. Staying comfortable and as cool as possible should be bywords. Long sleeve...
Debunking “No Pain, No Gain” Training
When I ask my athletes if they are into pain, nobody raises a hand. Yet when pressed, they reveal a no-pain-no-gain training bias. They think, for instance, that post-workout muscle soreness is a sign of having done a “good” workout. Indeed, some claim that all...
When you’ve Finished a Good Workout
In the BC Endurance training system, we end all workouts at the first sign of fatigue. Fatigue contracts capacity for exertion. Workouts should have the opposite, expansive effect. So, it doesn’t make sense to run into significant fatigue during training. The usual...
Knowing When You’re Fully Recovered
How do you know when you have “recovered” your energy from one of our weeknight workouts? What does it mean to be recovered? A related question is: How would you know when you are “fully” recovered from a race or workout? These questions require an understanding of...
How to Avoid Colds & Injuries Before Races
You and your body are two distinct entities. Increased fitness develops when you engage your body as a teammate. As team captain, your body sets the rules; as its teammate, you’re there to play by the rules, because disregarding them jeopardizes team results.The book...
On Rehabilitating Serious Injury
Are you injured? Here’s how to deal with doctors who recommend surgery and pain killers, and therapists with their strengthening and stretching regimens. Forget their “remedies;” they don’t address the underlying problem, which is always a combination of over-training...