Breaking through plateaus with cross training

In my years of running I have learned one of the most important realities of personal growth - where there is progress, there is likely a plateau ahead.  Whether it be physical, mental, or some of both, our body does a great job of adapting to what we ask it to do, and we're not seeing the net gains we became accustomed to.  What can we do to avoid the dreaded plateau?

As runners, we want to "raise the bar", and early returns (often leaps and bounds) in our training provides a sense of confidence and raise expectations.  Shaving minutes off a race time is not uncommon at first, but we soon learn, our training efforts do not necessarily produce linear results over the long term.  Our results feel like a series of peaks and valleys, rather than a steady climb.  Those minutes we shave off our times reduce to seconds, and further incremental gains are even tougher to achieve.  The training "plateaus" we experience are common, and in many cases, we see performance declines during the plateau stage.  That can be frustrating, and often leaves us wondering what we are doing wrong.

I've had the opportunity to work with a number of coaches over my years of training, and there is a reason why investing in coaching works.  Simply put, doing more of the same won't always help take my training to the next level.  I've had two significant breakthroughs in my running career - the first was breaking a 3-year decline in marathon performance, and the second was bucking the trend once again and breaking through the 4-hour marathon mark.  After a ho-hum 2015 marathon, I realized that I was on another plateau, and I wanted to change things up a bit.
 
My current coaches, Simon Escorcia and Tristan Mitchell at Denver-based RunColo Training have helped me integrate a number of time-tested workouts over the past two years, and now we've added some non-running exercises into my normal routine to help me find the "next gear" of personal performance.  I've seen gains already.  From a physical standpoint I feel great, and perhaps more importantly, it's helped my mental outlook.  It's 15 degrees and snowing as I write this, and I'm headed out this afternoon for yet another winter "dreadmill" workout.  The WOD's I'm doing during the week break up the monotony of the treadmill, and provide a dose of the feeling of progress that we all strive for.  I'm hopeful that my winter cross-training will change the trajectory of my training in the spring when I add more mileage.

Our bodies are amazing machines that are great at adapting to new challenges.  What worked last year may not be the recipe for success this year.  Don't be afraid to mix a few new things to your weekly schedule to strengthen your body, physically and mentally.  Hopefully that extra work today will give you that "next gear" at mile 20 this fall!


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