The Power Of Subtle Advice

Most of my training runs are solo. During the week, I usually run at night after the kids go to bed. For Saturday long runs, I try to leave the house by 6-7 a.m. in order to be back by 9-10 a.m. and not miss the entire day. Once and a while, I run with friends, family, or neighbors. While I am not a particularly fast or accomplished runner, I am a fairly well-read runner. I enjoy reading running books that dispense advice from those who know. I enjoy reading about topics such as proper running form, injury prevention, diet, stretching, and speed work. For these reasons, I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about these areas. As a result, it is often hard for me to bite my tongue when confronted with a fellow runner who is, for lack of a better phrase, hurting themselves.

For example, one running partner’s idea of a training pyramid is to build-up weekly mileage from zero to 30 miles in three weeks, get injured, recover, and start the process again. Another running partner has bad knees yet he always runs on concrete and asphalt surfaces rather than dirt trails nearby.

When I witness these running mistakes, I immediately want to dispense advice. I want to tell my running friends what they are doing is hurting them. Here’s the problem: I’m not Alberto Salazar or Jeff Galloway. In the past, I have tried to give advice based largely based on the teachings and writings of these legends. To my zero-to-30 friend, I preached about the 10 percent rule on mileage increases. To my cartilage-deprived concrete-loving friend, I’ve preached the benefits of soft surfaces. Yet despite my pleadings, some of my closest running companions failed to listen to my advice. Regardless, that is precisely where the problem lies – it was MY advice. The messenger is me; the idiot down the street that can barely break four hours in the marathon.

After some consideration, I started using my running library more wisely. I thought it would be more appropriate to let my amateur friends hear it directly from the source. My recent gift to my zero-to-30 friend was the temporary use of Galloway’s Book of Running. My preaching of Galloway’s teachings did not get through because I apparently lacked the credibility to deliver those teachings. As it turns out, Galloway dispenses his own advice quite well. After reading Galloway’s Book of Running, my friend has stayed injury-free through the use of sensible base-building techniques discussed in the book.

In the future, unless asked, I will shy away from giving unsolicited advice. Instead, I’ll turn to my library of legends and let them do it for me.