The Perils of Advice.

As you can probably tell after reading my ramblings, I am a loquacious fella.

If there is anything I enjoy as much as I enjoy running, it's talking about running.

And the field is rich with scope. Races, PRs, training paces, routes, injuries and rehab, nutrition and hydration, gear, psychology, foot anatomy...and shoes. God help me, I love talking about shoes.

And when I'm talking, very often, I end up giving advice.


Runners love giving advice.

Someone I know asked me for a training plan once. I'm not any kind of an expert, but I was stupid enough to consider myself one, just because I had run a couple of marathons and she was just starting out.

She wanted to start from scratch and run a 10k race in ten weeks flat, followed by a half marathon in another fourteen weeks. To be fair to myself, I tried to tell her that her goals were unrealistic. That seemed to discourage her. So I went and made out a plan for her. It wasn't a very good plan, unfortunately. She fell behind after a couple of weeks, tried heroically to stick with it for another couple of weeks before giving up almost completely.

I am now riddled with guilt at having lost a recruit for this sport that I love. I'm not sure I handled this correctly, or what I should have done instead. So, since then, I have become extremely guarded in dishing out advice.

New runners assume that someone who runs faster or farther than them, must obviously know more than them about running. And runners with experience sometimes (as in my deplorable case) end up assuming that they are in a position to give stone-tablet commandments to those who are just beginning. Blindly following what others do on the road, or what you read on a website, is playing Russian Roulette with your running goals.



Quite contrarily, I wouldn't tell you not to seek advice either. Learning from failures and successes of others is essential. But the truth is, no one...no one knows your body or your mind like you do. Every runner is unique. What works for one, may or may not work for another. Even the most universally accepted maxims in running are not guaranteed to benefit the next runner who implements them.

So here's some advice about giving advice... Say "Here's what I would do...", and make sure that the advisee understands that it doesn't mean "Here's what you should do..."

And here's some about taking advice...All advice needs to go through the filters of common sense and self-awareness.

Yeah... I write pompous stuff like this when I don't run in the morning...