In the Boston Bound program, our goal is to provide a challenging and supportive training experience designed to allow our runners to achieve their potential though tested and science based training strategies. We will not attempt to "bludgeon" you into fitness-that doesn't work. What we will do is to encourage you to test your limits while emphasizing healthy and injury reducing training habits and practices.

Running a marathon is an athletic feat requiring a high level of aerobic endurance along with sufficient strength in the muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones to withstand the stress of training for and racing 26.2 miles. We have found over our years of coaching and racing marathons that most runners will have better race performances and race experiences if they build a strong and wide base of aerobic endurance in their training through higher volumes of moderate paced running enhanced by measured doses of marathon specific speedwork. We often see runners who believe that they can train to race a marathon on 3-4 days of running a week, and that they can make up for lower mileage by doing more "speedwork". In our experience, this is a recipe for a disappointing marathon and a good way to injure oneself along the way.

It is certainly true that you can "run" a marathon on less than 40 miles per week, but that type of training is a good way to have a miserable final 10K of your marathon and will never allow you to achieve your potential best time in your race. The path to great aerobic endurance is more miles at paces in the range of 20% slower than your race pace for any training run distance. There is, of course, a time and place for speedwork to prepare for your race, but it needs to be done at the right time in your training program (after your aerobic foundation has been built) and in the right doses. Our mix of mileage, correct training intensities (paces) and speedwork has helped hundreds of runners to be successful in their marathon training over the years.

Many runners who have not trained with us before are surprised at how much we ask them to slow down their regular training paces. Most runners in our experience run at higher than optimal intensities for most of their training runs and in particular their long runs, leading to many instances of overtraining, injury, burnout and disappointing race performances due to overly tired legs and inadequately developed aerobic endurance. It is certainly counter intuitive, but we and many other coaches have learned from many years of experience that the best way to develop the endurance necessary to race well at longer distances is to keep most training runs at an easy aerobic pace. This allows the body to preferentially recruit and develop the slow twitch muscle fibers which are your endurance machines, and which are the engines of aerobic metabolism where fat can be burned for fuel to slow the rate of glycogen burning and push back the dreaded "wall".

By providing our runners with a training plan which includes the correct training intensities (paces) for their current running fitness, a detailed weekly schedule of runs which allows for measured overload and recovery, and a sensible progression of weekly mileage and long runs, we strive to provide the best possible training consistent with reducing the risks of training related injuries to allow our runners to achieve their marathon goals.