by Randy Ashley

“Sometimes you need lovin’
Morning, noon, and night
Makes no difference when it is
My darling, it’s all right.
-“I’m Qualified To Satisfy You”

These are the words of the great Barry White. The smooth operator let the world know that romance was all right. He let it be known that lovin’ yo’ woman-morning, noon, and night-was the way to do it.

Runners and other endurance athletes can live and learn by this lyric. Substitute “lovin’” with “runnin’,” get out the door morning, noon, and night, and you will understand the training regimen of a world class marathoner.

Take the Kenyans, for example. Prior to World Championships and Olympic Games, the Kenyans go to a training camp, where they run 18 runs per week to prepare for the field of battle. Usually they log three runs a day Monday through Friday, two runs on Saturday, and one long run on Sunday. The weekday schedule shapes up like this: Roll out for a 6am one-hour run that usually ends with a spirited finish, then head back out for a 10am session that is the hard workout for the day. Then it’s out again at 4pm for another one-hour run.

The Ethiopians are known to do things a little differently. Their schedule usually starts with a long hard session in the morning that can last for 2-4 hours and includes 45-60 minutes of calisthenics. It’s followed by an afternoon session that focuses on endurance and can go for up to 25 kilometers.

The underlying theme of both the Kenyan and Ethiopian training plans is that to stand on the podium, an athlete not only needs great will and strength, but an undying belief that hard work-and a lot of it-is the key ingredient to becoming a champion.

I have gone through two phases of my life where I trained and did little else. I woke, sipped coffee on the way to the Pisgah National Forest, scarfed down a banana, and then pushed off along the Davidson River for the morning ten-miler. When you are pushing the boundaries of your own physical limits, there is an immediate instinct to begin conservatively. No doubt, this instinct was a major reason that I was able to run over 160 miles a week for six weeks. When you have ten miles to do in the morning and another fourteen in the afternoon, you damn well better start off easy and let the rhythm of the mileage come to you.

But there are truths to be discovered in pushing the boundaries of our physical limits. What I found was that the mind, the mental fortitude, was the key ingredient to getting the miles in. The best coach I ever had always said, “The mind is the athlete.” His point is that the best endurance athletes in the world simply do not think; they just run. And they run a lot. A 2:07 marathoner has little time for thought while knocking out 4:48 miles splits with other competitors around him. This athlete is simply relying on the training that has already been laid down. He takes the inner strength forged through his training to the starting line, and then he just runs.

As the Olympic year rolls forward, catch a glimpse of these spectacular athletes-runners, triathletes, cyclists, and other endurance athletes-and understand that the ease at which they seem to rolling along is the result of pure toil, hours and hours of pushing their bodies to the limits again and again.

Randy Ashley is a coach with Zap Fitness and is seeking to re-attain the simplicity and curiosity of his four-year-old son, Jaks. Ashley can be reached at wrashley@hotmail.com.