Self-Coaching for Runners: Everything You Need to Know

From anxious beginner to confident athlete

Disappointment and anger rose to new heights as I typed out the email. I had prepared for months and invested in new clothes, a backpack, and poles. I learned how to navigate with a compass and map and logged countless mind-numbing hill repeats up and down the same small hill in my local park.

All for just this one race.

Now I had to cancel my start. I kept repeating myself, “Was it time for a coach?”

It was not that I had an overuse injury. In fact, I was lucky that I didn’t have a single injury in the 4 years since I started running — despite my admittedly unwise approach of jumping straight into the ultramarathon distance and significantly ramping up mileage quickly.

But a bad fall in a race that was supposed to be a training race for the big adventure left me with a big wound on my knee and a severely bruised hip. Instead of practicing patience and letting my body heal, I panicked about losing fitness. I continued running, albeit with a bandaged knee and a hurting hip.

“Maybe if I had a coach, I wouldn’t have been tempted to train through it?” I thought. “Maybe I would have asked for advice and taken it.” But it was too late now. The race was too…