Turning Forrest Gump into an Olympian

Welcome to the podcast from Stazza's Stable, the thus stable master speaks. My name's John Starrer, aka the world famous stable master. Nice ring to hit that, isn't it? As you all know, we don't do patrons, we don't do sponsorship, we don't do advertising, just do hard hit and fast talking training chat, and we also give away the best prizes on the planet. So we've given away trips to Mauritius about three or four trips to Mauritius if I remember rightly, two trips to the Caribbean and immumeral superstures and we'll be given away, super or having a competition to give away superstures. So stay tuned, it's in carefully, that we have a question towards the back end of the podcast. As you all know, this podcast is not scripted, there's no editing, all the mistakes they infer your amusement and my embarrassment, and that's happens pretty much every single week. But there's a real reason for doing the podcast is obviously to help people, and I'll be talking about that in a minute. But yeah, so based on, I don't know, 40 years experience of coaching, dinners for release, since I started online coaching in 2017, the 184 sub-three marathons, 250 plus sub-230s, and we've had athletes in the last three US Olympic marathon trials. We're talking about the Olympics in the marathon, that's what this podcast is going to be about today. So stay tuned, it's going to be pretty interesting, I think, because it's going to be a little bit different, or like normally talk about. As I promised two weeks ago, I was going to do the podcast weekly, and I failed again. So I think what I'm going to do is, I'm going to do the podcast for nightly. I just find it, it'll be a little bit easier, and I can give back quality ones. And I've got so many case studies, and that's what people are after. We'll be working our way through those, and then that'll help you guys. So what's happened in the last two weeks, a lot. It's been quite an interesting two weeks on my side. As you can imagine, it's never a boring day in the life of the world, the famous stable master. So what's happened? I might have mentioned a couple of these things in the last podcast, so I'm not too sure. I don't listen back to them. So let's talk about the toad, first of all, and I've given the punchline away from that one. So we were going out for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I went to put on my timberlands, nice pair of white timberlands, and I couldn't get my foot into the right shoe, and then I looked and there was a brown thing in there, and I thought to myself, my brother's put something in here, is it like a joke, so not the shoe, and it's a massive toad can fly in now. I don't know who was more scared me or the toad, so that was one interesting thing, very interesting indeed. And then the next thing was I just got out of the shower, got dried, got dressed, and I heard that screaming. What's going on? And she said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, come out, come out, so maybe in the alpha male I am, and super hard, nothing's so frightened to me at all, apart from mosquitoes." And went outside and there was a big black snake, slivering the cross, but I'll go to the carp or area. And I actually got a bit of a shock as well with it, so just leave it in it or go away, but we've realised that at the house where we stay, behind the house where we stay there's trees and woods and stuff like that, and that's what she said, that's what the snakes are coming from, and she knows some like, I don't know, we express it, but you know when a snake sheds its skin, I think that's what it's called, apart from the house as well. So there was a toe, there was a snake, and then a dancing shrimp, how about that one? So yes, Phil did a barbecue the other day, or naturally not did it, not just that, called both names, she, she, did she do it yet, she went out and she got prawns and some other stuff, you know, to fill in the barbecue, and when she's putting the prawns on, or Phil's watching, she says, look at that, and they were dancing on the heat, but we didn't fill in, I didn't realise they were alive, so she's getting these giant prawns or giant shrimp things, and putting them alive onto the barbecue, and they kind of were dancing, you know, with the heat, so I put a video of this up on Facebook, and it got a little bit of feedbacks at people's event, I didn't think it was cruel, but that's what it was sort of what I applied from it, and what they inferred, and I got that wrong way around, they implied I inferred, didn't I, yes, so there's a mistake, but I was saying, so we've had the giant shrimp stands in snakes, toads, all sorts of stuff, and then on top of that, not just children, we've got two children, I call them, I call them, made up names, Pedro and Lucy, I call Pedro Pedro, because he looks like a little Mexican guy, he's about 13, and Lucy's 16, so they live with her ex-husband's grandparents, and that's quite common thing in Thailand, the kids didn't really say with the grandparents, but they came because they're on holiday, they came over for a week or so, a week, ten days, so we had a good fun with those guys, going to the golf simulator, going up for dinner and things like that, so that's been happening too, and they'd just come back although Pedro stayed, staying on to the second of October, what else has happened, I don't know, I suppose, or I remember as I go along, but anyway let's get stuck into the podcast instead of me waffling about my really exciting life, so what we're going to talk about today is, we'll start off actually about the podcast, and you know, actually I get a lot of response because it's a global podcast, and as well in the chat, some things like that, and get a lot of people asking me questions about your bass and super basses, and pre-super basses, and things like that, and then people when they're in their marathon blocks, but I just want to reach up and now to, well, what came up on the Strava group that I have, as a stable Strava group, so this is from a guy called Rich Hess, now I've been speaking to Rich on Facebook Messenger, I think it is, and just helping him in a little bit with his training and guiding him, so he listens to the podcast all the time, so a big shout out to you Rich, so he posted this Stazza Appreciation post love heart, now you know I'm really humbled, so I was kind of embarrassed by this because I'm so humbled, and my humbleness will be a bit of a theme running through this today, so if you post it, high folks, hope you are well, huge and thankful to John for sharing all his wisdom, insight and knowledge on his superb podcast, he's right, I had tried three times to be at 302 PB from London three years ago, gradually getting older and further away from sub three years time, for 309 and more than one year ago, thankfully I came across John, his podcast then gave me a fresh motivation loads of learnings and taught me how I could do my long runs more effectively, quote, "If you're running 20 miles easy, that's what nothing to do with running 26 miles at marathon post, it's that simple." Stazza 2025, nine days ago in Chester, I run a sub 255 PB, something I would never have got anywhere near to without John's expertise, my 82 year old dad ran five marathons in the 80s and 90s and my mum isn't nearly through a successful course of chemo, being able to share that finish straight experience with my parents was priceless and I'll be ever grateful to John for that. Best of luck to also stay with me for the rest of the year with training, racing and genuinely enjoyment of life. He signed it off as well with the Strat Line from Stazza's stable website, it's not just coaching, it's not coaching, it's life changing. Great there, well done Rich, the light for you so and thanks for the nice post there too, it's Henry's going to be next isn't it now, so if he's at 255 he's got to be going to, I suppose in the years, time is what we're looking at, 240ish somewhere around there without having to increase his follow me, they're just carrying on following what you can do in and if you need any help Rich, just miss out more than happy to give you a very good transition from the year that you've just had and what you do the following year. So there we go. Talking about success stories and things like that as well, obviously it's a marathon season now so we're having loads of sub threes coming in, I'm expecting quite a few over the between now and Valencia and Malaga, few sub two thirties as well so it should be the interesting time and I'll be using some of those as case studies because we had a great result from Jordan, Katasen who's at the US, I've been coaching for a few years but I'll save the story because it's a good backstory to that one which I think you'll enjoy and a lot of challenges as well but we'll talk about that maybe in the next podcast, so I'll just give her a shout out, she's also done the coaching course, she's did my online coaching course and she's set up now and there working ways as a running coach but we'll get into her story next time so what I want to talk about today is making an Olympian, not EFA Cook, this is a new one so you're going to hear it here first, I'm going to talk about it before it happens so get ready for this and we're going to talk about how we're going to do it so I think you'll enjoy this because of the the training is going to be slightly different to the way I've coached other people as well. Kat contacted me on Facebook Messenger, now like me the guy is very very humble so I'm not going to mention his name at the moment we're going to do this under the radar but I'm going to tell you about it as we go along so if we can keep it a secret. So yeah the guy's very humble so he contacted me and he said that he'd been running for a short time and he had ran 65 minutes for half marathon and I thought that doesn't make sense. So anyway, I fired off the go far question there to him and then when it came back to me I saw what his job was. This guy's not made a mistake so I scrolled on down and a little read and then sort of arranged a chat with him which is what I usually do and we're going to call it, you need to give this guy a name so we're going to call him Forest Gump, okay Forest Gump not because he's stupid, he's stupid, he can be far from it, he's quite the opposite but when it came to his running training it was there, I don't know, it was strange to see how this guy managed to run 65 minutes for half marathon on the training and in the time that he's been running. Just to give you a little bit of backstory about the guys well, he's an exp professional footballer so talk about that more so as we go through the, you know, when we talk about McGain because I'm going to be talking about him once I'll give you like a month, every six weeks update on how he's getting along. So I thought to myself okay he's obviously got some sort of talent here and given the job that he does as well there's a kind of humble alpha male in him as well and but he's very competitive too so his training was strange because it is a bit like Forest Gump, like you know, he's during COVID, he couldn't play football anymore so he just started running and he just kept running and running and running and he was up to 120 miles a week and I don't want to give too much weight because if I give too much information away about his times and things then people will be able to work out who he is and you know he's being barris for like that I'm not but he would be and that's all he's not going to mention is the name on the podcast. So we've got a situation now, we've got a guy, he's got a very very busy job even busy than James Whitties and Poshboy and he's got a big goal and I kind of suggested it to him as well, we've got to be looking at the Olympics here, the next Olympics in 2028 I think it is, I don't follow the score. So that's the goal. So currently he's just sitting in around his PB 65 when it's in some change but one of the things that I've picked up on with the guy, what we're pulling for us actually, he's all Mr Gunn, the forest, you know we're pulling for us, is that it seems that he's only got one gear. Now it just happens that he's pretty decent, five minute mind, a smidge quicker. When I was talking to him yesterday and I was talking about the first session that I'm going to give him because he's on the recovery week after a race and I gave him the session he said, "Oh that sounds tough." And now he likes hard work as well and that's one of the problems he's been running constantly hard all the time but he's very robust as well. So the session that I'm going to kick him off with for next week, midweek session is 12 times three minutes at 10 mile effort off 35 second job recovery. So that, it's given that his half marathon time sort of pace is around five minute mind and in the round there. We're going to go for four fifties. So it'll be interesting to see how he goes that because the original stuff we could start with 15 because he likes a bit of hard work and about to make a few compromises here as well. But as we move forward things are slightly, so we're given that as his first session and then we've given him an endurance fine run for the weekend that we should all know about. So that's what we're going to start and now is week, next week is a bit hectic so we've tried to put it so it can only run singles. So I'm breaking the rule so I normally say no more than 65 minutes for easy runs but he's going to run his easy runs. They could be 80 minutes and he's going to slow them down quite a bit. So it is arranged for his slow runs will be 715 mile in to 730 mile. And that will get through that week. He's already slowed his pace of his easy runs down after our first conversation. And then the following week he's got a bit of an e. He's got a week off so we're going to like bring in the doubles. So he'll be doing four doubles. He'll be doing 65 in the morning, 65 in the evening and then he'll have the, as you've got that wrong he'll be doing three doubles at 65 in the morning, 65 in the evening. He'll do a workout, say on the Tuesday and he'll do his long run on Saturday or Sunday. And he's running seven days a week as well. So you know that this is keeping my leg up and now is that a level where we can cope with this as well? And I would say you don't need to run more than 50, 60 miles a week to run to 25, which is the case of the lock eyes at coach. But for this level, it's not that my leg is important. So we'll be giving him, he'll do an easy double easy on Monday's like 65, 65, Tuesday will be a workout day, Wednesday will be double 65s. Thursday will be a special workout which I'm going to talk about. And then Friday, double 65s, statly, double 65s and then Sunday the long run. It might be the other way around Saturday or Sunday depends. And then the following week is back into the hectic work so we'll have to go back to the singles and then the week after that, then everything's settling down for him. So you know we'll be able to progress the training and get a bit of structure. Now I will again, without giving too much away, I suspect that he's a one gear man at the moment. So you should all know now what the intervention here is a yo-yo. And it would be the hillblast. So I did the same thing with B for as well. You know, dropped in the hillblast and it changed everything that was happening with that and increased the mileage. So I think by bringing in the hillblast, this is going to help him sort of pass out the gears a little bit and will help him improve. Now he doesn't like short fast stuff. He just like running hard and long basically. So this is the thing that we've got to adjust and explain to him about the principles of endurance running and gone through the appropriate stress recovery adaptation, explained it and he gets it really bright lad. So he gets it all and it's going to be exciting to see how he progresses. So just to give you an overview of where we're thinking of going here. So his PB at the moment is 65. For the half, we're looking at sub 64 in the spring time and possibly a 10 mile race in the early part of the spring. We're going to be targeting obviously around 48 minutes and then 64, I think I have, yeah, not sure about the 10 mile time yet, but we're targeting sub 64 for the spring time next year. And then in the autumn, we're going to be looking at 63 minutes early autumn time and then we'll probably do a race in the January and then that will set him up for another 12, that will be into 20, 27 then. So and the plan is is to do a marathon in the spring time and the target time is we're not sure we have to see where he gets to, but I suspect this guy will run between 28 and 210 in his first marathon. I think that he's that good and you know with some progressive structure training around him as well. That's going to set him up nicely so and then the idea of his first marathon is he wants he's not too concerned about the time, it's more about racing it. So we'll quickly, quickly appropriate one so he can be at the front end of the field in a battle in the out because he likes to race inside and then in the winter of 20, 27, that's what we're going to go for the big time. Now the Irish record, which I think was broken yesterday, congratulations, I think it's just verbal curtain run 27 something so that will be on our radar. So there we go. Big predictions here. What I want to do with this is well it's talking through the process so you know I'll review it regularly and go through the training and explain the reason behind what I'm doing so because the way that I'm going to be coaching will be different so I've coached anybody else. As suppose what we can do there is we can look at why the free session is given that I say you only need to do two sessions a week. So I think with Forest we'll be giving him kind of pretty much something, we won't be putting him on the super base or anything like that, he doesn't need to go on that. We might use some of the super base sessions occasionally but it'll effectively kind of be on bridge training for the next 16, 18 months or so maybe a little bit longer than that. So what we're going to be working on is obviously just getting his 10 mile and getting his half marathon times down and then just keeping him consistent, healthy and trying to like I said pass out the gears and get him a little bit quicker as well so we can make the five minutes sort of half marathon pay, five minute mile and half marathon, both come down and down and then we want to set that up then is so that he'll be able to run probably around two eight pace between two eight and two ten in the marathon. So the third, so we've got the midweek session which will probably be on the Tuesdays, a tradition kind of session and then on the third day what I'm doing is I want to try to get the gears working like I said so I'm going to be giving him a mixture of different sessions so he'll do the hill blasts that will be one of the sessions but we'll be doing something a little bit different as well but we've been broken tempos with him so he'll do something like 15 minutes at 10 mile, I've got three minutes easy, ten times one minute on the flat or ten times one minute on the hill or for jog back recovery and then 15 minutes, three minutes easy and then 15 minutes at 10 mile effort so you know that it's going to be putting a range of sessions in there that aren't too strenuous but actually just giving a little nudge and you know trying to get the gears open that whole past it will hours keep saying. Mi'n ar yr enhanced o factor, sut yn meddwl ydych gulaud o'r eklo char g colouri Craes dydd. Ond frag hyfr Yea bes enti, ac mae яwyr ni sgynest hon yn hyr a cast. tracing, mae'r er sal i hanag i am ysterdfwedd saker Sa Frankfurtiau enw y bormed yn ddu. Mae'n eiweddgerdolun wrth trained, gwaith na'rfigur newшая amg Pan sy'n gallu ymwbw i hynny Mae'n i ddefnyddio Mae'r llwys gys calli'u clyfurtuaeth— sy'n prifrannio. Mae'r llwensei'n lingu bleb IDol oloo i undyn astrannych. Mae'r llwys gweithos yn gaffar allong wedi ar dda… Mae'r llwys un involved hynny dagedd rоче. Mae'r llwys gweithos yn ymwbw i hynny dagedd rwy'n gwaith o'r llwys gweithos yn ymwbw i hynny. Mae'r llwys gweithos yn ymwbw i hynny dagedd rwy'n gweithos yn ymwbw i hynny. Mae'r llwys gweithos yn ymwb i hynny dagedd rwy'n gweithos yn ymwb i hynny. i'n gweithio gwneud adhyfyd yn ymwch i'r gweithio gwneud i'r mat gael yn ymwch i'r maerfr ymwch i'r gwneud, ac mae'r gweithio gwneud o'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol i'r gwneud i'r gwneud i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol. Llwch a'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol. Mae'r gweithio gwneud i'r gweithio gwneud i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol i'r gwneud. Mae'r gweithio gwneud i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol. Mae'r gweithio gwneud i'r maerfr y llwyf yn ddoeddol.