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发帖数: 164 | 1 Top American Marathoner’s Success Raises Question: Is a Coach Necessary
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/sports/ryan-hall-sets-sights-
Ryan Hall, one of the few Americans who can compete against the best
international distance runners, is going to try to win the Chicago Marathon
on Sunday. And he is doing it without a coach, which is almost unheard of in
elite distance running, or elite sports for that matter.
Enlarge This Image
Steven Senne/Associated Press
Ryan Hall is one of the favorites to win the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
Hall makes his own training schedule, assesses his own progress, and runs
alone almost all of the time. He has been doing it for a year now, and when
he ran the Boston Marathon in April, he came in fourth in 2 hours 4 minutes
58 seconds, the only American in the top 15. He cut nearly four minutes from
his 2010 time.
It raises the question: At the elite level, are coaches really necessary?
What does an athlete miss when he decides to go it alone?
There are not many examples to go by. Frank Shorter, who won the marathon at
the 1972 Olympics, was self-coached. Joan Benoit Samuelson, an Olympic gold
medalist in 1984 who still races and set the American marathon record for
women over age 50, said that while she has worked with coaches, often at a
distance, she has pretty much coached herself for almost her entire career.
She is not against coaches, and she realizes that many athletes thrive when
they work with them. But, she said, she does better on her own. It suits her
personality. Rather than follow a coach’s schedule, she runs the way she
feels is best, depending on her energy level each day.
“Nobody knows an athlete like himself or herself,” said Samuelson, who
feels free to modify a workout or even skip one if she is not feeling up to
it and keeps a running diary to assess her progress.
Hendrick Ramaala, a South African runner who won the New York City Marathon
in 2004, said he had no choice but to coach himself when he started
competing.
“I couldn’t get a big coach because I was not a big achiever at that time,
” Ramaala said in a telephone interview from South Africa. “Later I chose
not to have one.”
“I have no regrets,” he added.
Hall, who will turn 29 next week, said he came to his decision a year ago
when he was the great hope for an American winner in Chicago, as he is this
year. He had come in fourth in Boston, with a time of 2:08:41. But on Sept.
29, 2010, less than two weeks before the race on Oct. 10, he announced that
he was overtrained, too tired to race, and withdrew.
“I was just way overfried and overcooked,” he said in a telephone
interview.
He began to consider whether he really wanted to be coached and run with a
group — he had been running with the Mammoth Track Club, where he was
coached by Terrence Mahon.
“The thing that was disappointing, even though I was training really hard,
I wasn’t seeing any improvement,” Hall said.
And he felt he was not close enough to God, he said. As a Christian, he
decided he would, in effect, let God be his coach.
“I really wanted that,” Hall said. “To wake up every morning, to get down
on my knees and say: ‘God, I need your help. I don’t know what to do.’
” He reasoned that even if his running got worse, he would gain something
because he would be closer to God.
So Hall has been running by himself, the way he prefers. He sometimes runs
with other people for his easier runs, but for the most part he prefers to
run his own way, at his own pace, according to how he feels that day. And,
he added, running by himself, “I don’t turn every workout into a race.”
“The beauty of coaching yourself is being able to be really flexible,”
Hall said. When he worked with a coach, he would do whatever the coach said
to do and, he admitted, he did not give his coaches much feedback.
“I would see these workouts lined up for each week and I would say, ‘I’ve
got to do this.’ That’s how I got myself into this huge hole.”
Mahon said the challenge in self-coaching is honestly evaluating how you are
doing.
“If you have a bad day, you have to try to understand — are you tired, or
is it your training?” Mahon said. That can require looking at the bigger
picture, looking at trends in an athlete’s performance, he added.
“Athletes are used to looking at one day,” he said. “But if you look at
one day of training, you are not seeing the whole map.” And, Mahon said, “
coaches are working off of the experience not only of that athlete but of
many before them.”
Samuelson, though, said she could get a good idea of how she was doing by
looking at her running diary. And Hall understands the principles of
training. He is not like Ramaala, who had to figure it all out for himself.
Ramaala said he was lucky. Trial and error worked for him. But, he said, “
there are thousands of me out there who got tired and injured and gave up.”
On the other hand, he said, it is not clear to him that a coach would have
made him any better.
“People will tell me, If you had had a good coach when you were young, you
would possibly break the world record, possibly win an Olympic medal. If. If
. Maybe I would be out of the sport, injured and frustrated.”
Hall, Ramaala said, “knows what he is doing.”
“I think he can achieve more than he has ever achieved,” Ramaala said. | R*****s
发帖数: 41236 | 2 We will know tomorrow :) | o*******r
发帖数: 4921 | 3 我的回答是: 吃饭不是只靠最后一口吃饱的。
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【在 n**d 的大作中提到】
: Top American Marathoner’s Success Raises Question: Is a Coach Necessary
: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/sports/ryan-hall-sets-sights-
: Ryan Hall, one of the few Americans who can compete against the best
: international distance runners, is going to try to win the Chicago Marathon
: on Sunday. And he is doing it without a coach, which is almost unheard of in
: elite distance running, or elite sports for that matter.
: Enlarge This Image
: Steven Senne/Associated Press
: Ryan Hall is one of the favorites to win the Chicago Marathon on Sunday.
: Hall makes his own training schedule, assesses his own progress, and runs
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