KEY ELEMENTS OF ANY FORMULA FOR ACHIEVING YOUR RUNNING
goals must include perseverance and never giving up on your dreams. And few people illustrate this better than Mara Yamauchi. Inspired by watching the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, an 11-year-old Mara decided she was going to become an Olympian, but it would be a full 24 years before she toed the marathon start line at the Beijing Games.
Not fast enough to turn professional after leaving university, she followed a career as a diplomat and didn’t become a full-time athlete until the age of 33. The journey was long, but she never gave up.
Her dream became reality when she crossed the finish line in sixth place in Beijing, the joint best performance by a British woman in the Olympic marathon. A year later she was runner-up in the London Marathon with a PB of 2:23:12, which until recently put her second on the all-time list of female GB marathoners; and she became a double Olympian when she represented Team GB at the London 2012 Games. Now a coach and author of a new book, Marathon Wisdom, she sat down with RW to offer insight into how we can all achieve our running dreams.
RUNNER’S WORLD You became an elite marathon runner late and set your PB aged 35. What advice do you have for anyone pursuing a goal later in life?
MARA YAMAUCHI ‘I’d say just go for it. If you have the motivation and the will, and you’re able to commit the time and energy, really go for it. You can excel at the marathon later in life and I know of runners breaking PBs in their forties, fifties and beyond.’
RW There’s a chapter in your book titled ‘Basics, basics, basics’. What are the basics that are key to improving your running?
MY ‘For me, the basics are training, fuel and rest. These are the fundamentals, but now there’s so much information available from podcasts, websites, coaches etc, that it’s easy to overlook the basics. The right quality and quantity of training, good nutrition and hydration, and getting enough sleep and looking after yourself are the fundamentals of what will make you improve.’
RW What did a training week look like for you around the time you ran your fastest marathon?
MY ‘I ran, on average, 100 miles a week, which for an elite female athlete is not that high. I often tried to run more than that, but found I would get overtrained, injured or develop niggles. So I accepted that, because I was a bit older, I wasn’t able to do the usual high mileage, and I tried to make sure that I was doing training that had a purpose and was specific for the marathon every day. I did a mix of speed sessions (I prioritised longer efforts because I was focusing on the marathon), long runs and what I call “fast jog” – a speed at which you can’t quite hold a conversation. The point where talking is difficult is the effort that’s good for building your fat-burning capacity and a big aerobic engine.
Very easy running – where you can hold a conversation – also has its value. You can churn out the miles at that pace without developing excessive fatigue, it’s relatively easy to recover from and the miles in the bank will help with your running economy. But easy running is limited in terms of physiological adaptation.’
RW We often talk about polarised training these days – keeping easy runs really easy and the hard stuff really hard – but your approach places a lot of emphasis on the middle ground in marathon training…
MY ‘Yes, doing training that is very hard, so fast, anaerobic intervals plus very easy running is a good approach for athletes focusing on shorter events or crosscountry, but it really neglects the middle range of speeds and those are very important because you can’t run a marathon anaerobically – that’s the whole point of it. So you have to build up your aerobic capacity and your fat metabolism. This was a mistake I made when I switched to the marathon – I thought I’d just continue what I’d previously been doing when training for cross-country and shorter distances and simply add in some longer long runs and longer intervals. But actually, for the marathon, you really need to focus on those middle speeds.’
‘DON’T BECOME A SLAVE TO YOUR GPS WATCH’
RW We also spend a lot of time talking about fuelling marathons with carbohydrate. Can you just explain a little more about the importance of fat metabolism?
MY ‘We basically have two fuels that our bodies can use: fat and carbohydrate. We use fat more when we’re running slowly, engaging our aerobic metabolism, and we use carbohydrate more at faster speeds when we’re using our anaerobic metabolism. You don’t switch entirely from one to the other – at any speed there will be a mixture of fuels used. For the marathon, you’re never anywhere near your top speed, other than when you’re sprinting for the finish line, perhaps. You’re always running somewhere below your top speed because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to reach the end without running out of carbohydrate. So fat metabolism – and training our bodies to metabolise fat efficiently – is critical for the marathon.’
RW In your book, you talk about giving yourself ‘freedom to flourish’ and being wary of the potentially limiting impact of technology. How do you feel that tech can hold you back?
MY ‘By “freedom to flourish”, I mean freeing yourself from mental barriers that can slow you down, and technology is one aspect of that. We all have GPS watches and we’re all very focused on the pace we’re running. That’s useful in some ways because it allows you to monitor your training and record exactly what you’re doing, but I feel it can limit runners. If I set intervals in training, runners will always ask, “What pace shall I run at?”, whereas an alternative way to look at it is to just run as fast as you can. I feel GPS watches are useful, but don’t let them stop you from really letting rip and running freely using your own judgement of effort to guide you. My message is to use GPS watches in whatever way they can helpfully inform your training, but don’t become a slave to them.’
RW So you’re not a believer in obsessively checking your wrist on the run then?
MY ‘If you look at your watch when you’re training or racing, your brain has to process the information and decide what to do about it. Do you ignore it? Or do you act on it? Do you speed up? Do you slow down? And this is all mental energy and focus that isn’t being used for running faster. In some of my best performances I ran without a watch, or if I did use a watch, I didn’t really pay much attention to it. In races, there’s also the issue of your watch getting out of sync with the kilometre or mile markers, which can be a bit confusing or discombobulating. When your watch clicks over a mile but the mile marker is nowhere in sight, your brain has to process that, whereas without a watch on you’d just be focusing on your running.’
RW You also talk about goals. How important is goal-setting in achieving running success?
MY ‘Goals can be very motivating – they give direction and something to aim for. The sense of having a destination at the end of a journey is really useful. But just having a goal isn’t going to mean you achieve it – you still have to do the hard work. And that’s where breaking goals down into short- and medium-term goals is useful, because that gives you concrete things to do day to day, week to week, month to month. An overall goal is useful for motivation, but you need to drill down into the detail of what that means in terms of what you do every day.’ RW There’s a sense from your book that you advocate a simpler approach to running. Is that a message you wanted to get out?
MY ‘Absolutely. Running is a very simple sport: you just put on some kit and a pair of shoes and off you go. But I feel that in recent years, we’ve got into the habit of complicating it, perhaps unnecessarily.
People can sometimes get fixated on minutiae and they forget that what’s really important is training, fuel and rest. It’s a question of balance – make sure you do those basics properly and then worry about all the extra detail.’
RW How can people best fit those basic pillars for running success into busy lives, with work and family and all the other demands on their time?
MY ‘Habits are really important – the habits you make with your training, with your food, with your sleep. These are what will make you a better runner. With nutrition, for example, if it’s difficult to find the headspace to concentrate on it, just tell yourself that you’ll have five vegetables a day, no matter what. Creating small habits that force you to do something that will improve your running is really helpful.
We’re all so busy that unless you turn that general desire to improve your running into small, concrete things, it’s too easy for time to drift by, and then you realise you haven’t really achieved anything. It’s also useful to be realistic and to have a training programme that you can follow consistently. If you’re trying to do too much and are finding your training is inconsistent, that you’re developing injuries or having to skip sessions, then it’s better to try a slightly less ambitious routine but do it consistently. It’s always better to do a plan to 90% or 95%, rather than biting off a bit too much and being inconsistent.’
RW You spent time in Japan, where there’s an amazing and very successful running culture. What did you learn there that you think runners in the west could most benefit from?
MY ‘I learned the importance of focusing on the middle speeds, as mentioned earlier. When I went to Japan, I was surprised that I was beating some athletes in training or in the half marathon who were then quicker than me in the marathon. It was because their training is very marathon focused and they work at slower speeds a lot. That made me think that I needed to make my training more marathon specific and focus more on those middle speeds.
I also learned from their work ethic and discipline: Japanese athletes train incredibly hard. They are so devoted to their sport and put their backs into it like I’d never seen before. Another thing is variety in nutrition and the importance of highly nutritious foods, such as green leafy vegetables, oily fish, seaweeds, nuts and seeds. Also, the marathon world there is massive. There are lots of athletes, there’s a lot of depth and there are a lot of races. The public are really behind the marathon and many of the races are televised live. It’s a real experience to be in a country that really loves the marathon. I’d
really recommend that anyone who has a chance to do so experiences a race in Japan.’
RW How do you feel about the changes that carbon-plated shoes have brought to running, and to the marathon specifically?
MY ‘My views are mixed. On the one hand, if you look at it at a systemic level, I think what they’ve done to the sport is a shame. In the women’s elite marathon they’re worth, on average, about three minutes, and they’re worth something like 90 to 100 seconds in the men’s marathon. This is massive, so you can’t really compare times now with what’s happened in the past. When I see incredibly fast times, I find myself converting back into “old money”. That’s not to dismiss current athletes as being less able than those who came before them, I’m not suggesting that for a moment. They all train just as hard as previous generations, but times have moved on across the board – men and women in the marathon, half marathon, 10K – we’re in a completely different era.
People say that technology moves on, but this really is a step change because shoes were always trying to minimise obstruction to human endeavour – so they were very light, very flimsy. What we have now is value being added to the human endeavour – a spring in the shoes. Unlike sports that involve a lot of technology, such as golf or cycling, running was just about human effort and I feel that we’ve lost that now. It’s now about human effort plus technology.
Having said all that, I do think there are positive aspects. I’ve heard that the wear and tear on the body is less in carbon shoes, so that means you can train with fewer injuries. It might allow you to prolong your career, to train really hard in your youth but not suffer the physical damage that we see happening to a lot of elite athletes after they retire. I’m a case in point – I’m 48 now and I constantly get niggles. I wonder whether my body would be suffering the wear and tear it is now had I been wearing carbon shoes during my 10 years of hard marathon training.’
RW Do you think there’s a case for allowing athletes to train in carbon-plated shoes but not to race or set official times in them?
RW ‘That’s perhaps what should’ve happened, but the horse has bolted. I can’t see the sport going back. So whatever your views about the pros and cons of them, I think we have to accept that we are where we are and you have to use them to your advantage because everyone else is. Still, I think you have to bear in mind when records were set. For example, I was recently pushed down into third place on the UK all-time marathon list by Jess Piasecki. Jess is a fantastic athlete and I’m absolutely not quibbling, I’m pleased for her. But if the shoes are worth around three minutes, are we comparing like with like? That’s no criticism of Jess or other athletes in the current generation – I admire all of them, I know how hard it is and how hard they train – but it’s difficult to compare carbon-shoe performances with non-carbon-shoe performances.’
RW Perhaps we should have a breakaway carbon-free race series for the purists?
MY ‘That’s the beauty of cross-country and even trail running. Bladed shoes won’t help you much in trail running and they certainly won’t in cross-country. And of course cross-country is just pure racing – there’s nothing about time or distance – so we do still have those. There are pockets of the sport where we’re in the pre-carbon world.’
RW There’s a strong holistic dimension to the training you prescribe in your book – the idea of ‘self-compassion’. How can runners bring this into their routines?
MY ‘It could be things like occasionally skipping a training session if you’re feeling out of sorts. It could be just accepting that you perhaps can’t do as much in a training routine as you’d hoped, or it might mean taking a break if you find yourself falling out of love with running.
Running can be tough – getting out there to train day in, day out. Sometimes you need to step back and say, “Okay, I need a break now” or “This is dominating my life”, and to have that self-compassion.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking, “How much can I run?” without considering what else is going on in their lives. Things such as work, family, caring responsibilities… all these things take up huge amounts of time and mental and physical energy.
You have to look at your life in the round. If you’re in a stressful period at work, for example, you may have to accept that your running has to take a bit of a back seat. You have to be realistic and accept your limits.’
RW How do you view the effect of social media and data-sharing platforms on runners now?
MY ‘Again, I have mixed views. You can learn a lot from seeing what other people are doing – you can see their training or how someone has performed and what might have enabled that. But equally, “compare and despair” is often unhelpful. You look at everyone else and think, “Gosh, they’re running fast” or “Look at that PB they’ve set” and it’s easy for your confidence to drain away and for you to be left feeling inadequate. So sometimes I think it’s good to just shut all that out, to forget about what other people are doing and concentrate on yourself. The only person whose behaviour and performance you can influence is your own, so forget about others and focus on you: “What training can I reasonably do? If I’m having a bad patch, why might that be? Am I sleeping properly? Am I eating properly?” I’m glad I grew up and learned to love running before social media and GPS watches. It was simple and I just focused on myself. I feel for young people now, those who feel that if you go running you have to put it on Strava, or that you have to look like a million dollars or worry about how many likes you’re getting on your Instagram posts. It’s nice to engage with other people and to learn from other people, but I also think you need to just shut yourself away from it all sometimes.’
‘RUNNING IS NO LONGER JUST ABOUT HUMAN EFFORT’