COACH’S CORNER - Don't Miss Another Goal by James Sieber

We’re all looking for that training plan or workout that gets you to your dream goal quicker, feeling faster, stronger, and more confident, the challenge ahead of you.

But a training plan only works when it matches the person doing it (that’s you!). In practice, that means you’re always solving the same equation:

Training Stress (running + strength + life) + Recovery = Adaptation*

*Adaptation meaning the fun stuff we all want: faster, stronger, confident.

Because training stress isn’t just the run you do. It’s also your sleep, your work week, your family load, your nutrition, and how well your body handles impact. When those things stack up, even a “good” plan can start to break you down instead of building you up.

So before you commit to a goal, write a plan, or ask to work with a coach for the “best program”, take a moment to map your starting point.

Your starting point

You can use these questions as a quick self-audit, or send them to your coach before your next block.

• What is your training age (how long you’ve trained consistently)?
• What is your injury history (and what keeps coming back)?
• How high are your stress levels right now?
• How strong is your recovery ability (sleep, food, rest, resilience)?
• What is your true time availability each week?
• What are your goals (and why do they matter to you)?
• What terrain can you train on?
• What do you enjoy (and what do you avoid)?
• Where do similar runners seem stronger or weaker than you?
• What other hats are you wearing in life?

Now let’s unpack why each one matters.

1) Training age: how long you’ve been doing the work

Training age is not your birthday. It’s how many months or years you’ve had steady exposure to running.

It includes your history with long runs, hills, downhills, speed work, strength training, and plyometrics. Two runners can both run 50 km/week, but one has built up to it over 6 years, and the other did it in 6 months. They’re not the same athlete.

This matters because fitness can improve fast, but tissues (tendon, bone, fascia) adapt more slowly. Training age tells us how quickly we can layer complexity (volume, vert, intensity, plyos) without gambling.

2) Injury history: the best clue about what might happen next

Past injury doesn’t mean you’re fragile. It just gives you a clear pattern to respect.

In research on running injuries, a previous injury is one of the strongest predictors of getting injured again. In simple terms, the same problem often returns when the load rises.

Why?

• residual strength/coordination deficits
• altered movement patterns
• incomplete re-loading (you “returned to running”, but didn’t fully return to capacity)

If you’ve had a repeat injury, the question is not “Can I run?” It’s “Have I rebuilt the strength and load tolerance that protects me?”

3) Stress levels: your body doesn’t separate life from training

The concept of stress is tricky because it isn’t just the physical load of running. It’s any demand your body must respond to, because your body doesn’t know if the stress came from a long run or a rough week at work:

• work deadlines
• poor sleep
• travel
• relationship strain
• low energy availability
• illness
• financial pressure

When stress stays high for too long, your system can start to struggle to recover. This is sometimes explained through “allostatic load”, which is a fancy way of saying the wear and tear that builds up when demands stay high.

That’s why some runners get injured during “easy” training blocks. Their running load might be fine, but their total life load is not.

4) Recovery ability: your “adaptation budget”

Recovery is not just rest days. It’s sleep, food, hydration, downtime, and how well you cope with day-to-day pressure.

Poor sleep has been linked with a higher risk of running injuries in research; dehydration has been linked to elevated stress levels. That doesn’t mean sleep and hydration are the only factors, but they are levers most runners can improve by carrying a water bottle with electrolytes or creating a sleeping environment that is darker and cooler to sleep more deeply.

If your recovery ability is low right now, the answer is not to train harder and push through. It’s usually to train smarter and recover better.

5) Time availability: the plan has to fit your real life

The best plan is the one you can repeat week after week.

When I work with an athlete who is looking to take on their first ultra, or step up the distance, the first question I ask is: “Do you have time to do this amount of training each week?”

I ask this question because I’m not a coach to just get people through events in any state possible. I love coaching because I love seeing runners thrive, feel strong, discover they are capable of so much more than they thought, and do this year after year, not for one event.

The time you have and are willing to put in are big factors in designing your training.

6) Goals: choose the goal that fits the runner you are

Goals are important. They give training direction. They help you get out of bed on the cold, rainy days when the bed seems extra comfy

But goals also need to match your starting point. A big goal with the wrong timeline often creates stress in the best case and injury in the worst. An unrealistic goal (often due to a timeline, not a potential) doesn’t mean you’ll rise to it. Often quite the opposite.

One helpful trick is to shift from only outcome goals (like placing or time) to strong process goals (like pacing well, fuelling well, and nailing weekly consistency). The input is training consistency and execution. The output is the result, and we don’t control that.

7) Terrain availability: you can’t escape trail specificity

Trail running isn’t “road running but slower.” The muscular demands shift a lot:

On the uphills, energy demands change compared to flat terrain, and strength/muscular endurance (fatigue resistance/durability) becomes a much bigger factor.

Going downhill puts huge eccentric braking forces through our legs, specifically our quads, causing extensive muscle damage and neuromuscular fatigue, especially if you haven’t trained specifically for them.

And the technical terrain common in many trail races, especially those in the mountains, requires us to build complex skills in proprioception (knowing where our body is in space), control, relaxation, and decision-making, such as choosing our line.

If your local terrain doesn’t match your race, you can still prepare. You just need to train the limiter with smart sessions, strength work, and ideally a training weekend or two on course or similar terrain. Oh, and don’t forget the fast and flowy downhills to bulletproof your legs.

8) What you enjoy (and don’t): this is not fluff

Enjoyment matters because it predicts consistency.

If you hate track workouts, forcing them every week might not make you tougher. It might make you stop.

A good plan balances what works physiologically with what you can keep showing up for. Motivation research shows that supportive environments (autonomy, competence, connection) help people stick with training.

And in practice, this is where choosing the social run over the exact run on your training plan can be really important. I’m not saying to do this all the time, but if social runs are a big reason you love running, avoiding them seems counterintuitive to long-term enjoyment and consistency.

At the end of the day, anything that leads to consistency will lead to your faster, stronger self over time.

9) Where similar runners are stronger than you: find your gap

This is where coaching gets really practical. Common limiters:

• Downhill durability (eccentric tolerance)
• Uphill capacity
• Fatigue Resistance - metabolic, mechanical, neuromuscular, cognitive
• Fuelling and hydration
• Plyometric (reactive) capacity
• Pacing errors from ego or inexperience

Identifying where you are dropping time to runners around you, or where there are mistakes/knowledge gaps in your training, is a great way to know what needs to be worked on first.

You don’t add these because it’s trendy. You add them because they build fitness.

10) What other hats are you wearing?

This might be the most important question of all. Parent. Partner. Shift worker. Business owner. Caregiver. Student. Travelling. Low sleep season. High stress season.

Your hats don’t stop you from chasing big goals. They help you choose the right goal right now, and the right training load to match it.

When runners respect their hats, they train with less guilt, more consistency, and fewer forced breaks.

What you can do today

If you only take one thing from this, take this:

Don’t ask, “What’s the best training plan?”

Ask, “What training plan fits my starting point and my goals, so I can stay consistent and get faster, stronger, and be more confident on the start line?”

That’s the real long-term performance strategy in trail running, and any training goal.