A training plan that you find online, even if it's an amazing plan, is not customized for your physiology, your history and goals, or your schedule. Some training plans you'll find are not even based on science! But let's say you pay for a 'customized' training plan to meet those criteria. Most likely it has just been a stock plan for a race that has been adjusted to fit your mileage and fitness range. Hopefully the coach who made it also took into account your strengths and weaknesses based on your athletic history. Even still, training that is geared toward a specific event is most likely not helping you reach your long-term fitness goals. There is a way to do both, but it can't be done with pre-determined training. But then – what happens when you get sick or stressed and need to miss a few days? How do you modify it and get back on track to ensure peak performance? Do you skip the long run? Do you add in a workout on a rest day? Do you run two scheduled workouts in one day? Research shows that pre-determined training (even if it's customized) is not as effective as training that is adapted frequently. Custom coaching builds your training from the ground up around you. It's your body, your goals, and your schedule that we build from, so everything is a custom fit. Training with me prioritizes your long-term development as an athlete, not just your next big race. Inevitably, something will come up and derail you for a few days. Having a coach means they can rewrite your training weekly, or even daily, to ensure you're training as ideally as possible within the context of your life! Coaching also isn't just customized training. It's daily communication, education about the sport, camaraderie, motivation and unconditional support!

Everything. There are no additional fees whatsoever. My goal is to provide anything and everything I can to help you in your running. If I can support you – I will!

We have an amazing community! This has been an extremely important part of my running and my life, and I try to help facilitate that for athletes I work with as well. There are Miles and Mountains Facebook and Strava groups, and an Instagram hashtag. We have group chats, share photos and running/life updates. We also occasionally have group Zoom sessions about specific topics. I send out a periodic newsletter for those that aren't as active on social media. There is also a members area on the website with team discounts, resources, and a swag shop with running singlets/shirts, casual shirts, sweatshirts, hats and even masks. Occasionally there are group runs or meetups in areas that have multiple Miles and Mountains athletes, and it's always fun to see teammates at races!

Yes! Athletes I work with have a customized strength and mobility plan designed to maintain overall fitness, support their running, improve weaknesses and lower injury risk. Like the running training plan, these vary widely by age and athletic history, goals, training volume, available equipment and whether or not you enjoy strength training. As a general rule, my philosophy on strength training is: consistency, simplicity and specificity. While developing pure strength via traditional lifts may be beneficial in certain circumstances, I've found that making exercises extremely specific to the unique demands of running, and emphasizing simple routines leads to much greater consistency over months and years. That said, as we age, 'lifting heavy' becomes increasingly helpful to prevent age-related muscle mass decline. That doesn't necessarily mean traditional gym lifts, but it certainly can! I am well-versed in biomechanics, injury prevention and treatment and overall strength and mobility. I'm in the middle of a 'Human Movement Specialist' certification to formalize what I've learned over the years.

Not only can I, it's one of my favorite parts of coaching. It's a fact of life that most runners will get a minor injury at some point. But through careful prehab and strength training, combined with mindful training structure, we can not only limit the risk, but decrease recovery time if it does happen. I am well-versed in biomechanics, injury prevention and treatment and overall strength and mobility. I'm in the middle of a 'Human Movement Specialist' certification to formalize what I've learned over the years. In many cases, with careful and prompt adjustment and treatment, we can stop a sudden ache/pain in its tracks within a few days to a week – before it becomes an injury. After working with hundreds of athletes, only a small handful have had injuries requiring a significant long-term reduction in running, and most of those were acute injuries from outside running. A little more common, but still rare, are things that require a refocus on prehab/rehab, while slightly reducing or even maintaining running. Still, the injury percentage of clients that I work with (and I suspect clients of most coaches) are significantly lower than the averages among runners. A lot of runners seek out a coach when they're injured, so I can also help with a return to running protocol, depending on the injury and time away from running. Helping athletes return to what they love is a big perk of being a coach!

Definitely! If you have a modern cell phone, it has the ability to film in slow motion. I can walk you through taking a few video angles of your running, and do an analysis from those videos. From there, feedback might include cadence and form cues, or strength and mobility training designed to correct specific imbalances that are visible. Research doesn't really support dramatic form adjustments (like footstrike) for experienced runners, so our adjustments are always subtle, and often involve correcting strength imbalances rather than form itself. That said, many athletes have found dramatic improvements after a few subtle form tweaks!

Yes! I am always happy to provide basic support about performance nutrition, both around running and throughout your life. If you're looking to tune-up your diet to support your health and running, I can help! Please note that I am not a registered dietitian, and you should always seek one out if you want in-depth help or meal plans, have limitations in your diet, are trying to combine performance improvements with weight loss, or have unanswered questions. This is something more akin to medical advice than fitness advice, and it can be extremely dangerous to accept advice from someone not formally trained. Very few running coaches are registered dietitians or nutritionists, and if someone that is not one of those two things tries to give you highly-customized nutrition advice, please run away screaming!

Absolutely! Coaching is a relationship, and that's based on communication. No good coach is in it just for writing training – that's the least-fun part, aside from marketing anyway! I'm always happy to answer questions, provide feedback or encouragement, or help you through a mental block that is impacting your training. In short - I am here for you. I update training logs 5 days per week, and respond to urgent texts and emails during waking hours 7 days per week. For more in-depth discussions of past or future training, or complex questions, I'm always happy to set up a chat over Zoom or the phone.

It's pretty neat - check out the Sample Training Log here! It's a heavily customized and collaborative spreadsheet. Any updates either of us make are instantly visible to the other person. I use this for a variety of reasons, but in general the 'training/coaching systems' out there do not support a healthy or effective approach to running or coaching. I read everything that is put in here, and it is all relevant when coaching holistically! The blue columns are for you to fill out: On the left, if you're going to be traveling, or have other plans that will impact your training On the right, your actual running stats for that day, and more importantly how you felt, whether there are other things happening in your life, or if you have specific aches, or questions! The green columns are for me to fill out: first what your actual training plan entails for each day, and then a place for daily feedback from me! In the center, the log calculates your planned mileage or minutes and your actual mileage/vert automatically. Note the checkboxes to keep you honest on strength and mobility!] The log is highly customizable. If you know you won't use something, we can hide it, or we can add columns for other things you want to track. If you're using the metric system, we switch everything over to KM and M. If you prefer me to plan runs by time, we can do that too! Some runners meticulously track all their metrics, others run without a watch. Whatever works for you, works for me! We also have other 'tabs' of the Log for Strength and Mobility, Goals and Dreams, and an Athlete Resources page with helpful links. Again this is highly customizable, what's shown here is my template, but each athlete's log looks very different after just a few months!

I am happy to look at whatever data you would like! Some athletes run with only a Timex; others are members of the Miles and Mountains Strava group, and I see their runs there. All athletes enter basic information in the training log about their runs, including mileage, overall time, and subjective feedback, and this is primarily what guides future training. From a training perspective, it's important not to get into the weeds with analyzing data. Your body doesn't understand miles and pace - it understands effort over time. Life stress and environmental factors play a big role in that! So it is not only unimportant how fast you ran, it can be counter-productive to even think too much about it. So, more than data, I'm interested in how things felt, and what's going on for you in running and life. That said, it can be helpful at times to have a bit more context, so when it's helpful and relevant, I'm happy to take a closer look at your data file from a workout or long run, to provide advice on how to execute those. Note that this is never judging how a run went based on data, rather it's figuring out what factors might have led to a run that we already know was amazing or terrible. Like with running in general, you get out what you put it in. The better the information you give me, the more customized your training will be! That said, I prioritize mental wellness, so if it's easier for you to run without data, we can do that! The training log is fully customized (see above) so we can cut out what isn't bringing you joy.

There are several options here! The most common is for payments to be recurring monthly via your payment method of choice. There are also 6-month and 12-month packages, both recurring monthly, and pre-paid at the start. If you'd prefer, we can also set up a customized billing to best fit your life. If you decide to pause your coaching, you retain credit for unused days, which will be used automatically when you start back up again. This is helpful in times of life stress or prolonged illness/injury. If you're having financial difficulty, always reach out to me first, and we will do whatever we can to make things work! You can read the full terms and conditions here, but if you have questions, concerns, or need something individualized to fit your life, reach out! I try to be as flexible as I possibly can.

I do have the ability to provide some discounts for those who have the need. Please reach out! If we're a good fit, I will do what I can to make it work!

My philosophy of coaching is simple: unconditional support to achieve fulfillment in running and life - whatever that means to you! Got big goals? Great - I'll help you reach your wildest dreams and hopefully beyond! Just want some support in building the habit and staying consistent? No worries - I'll help. Regardless of your goals, I'll help you find your 'why' and learn to love the process and purity of running. I view my coaching role as purely a navigator. I'll show you a good path and give you pros and cons of various decisions, but you are still the captain of your ship, and I'll support however I can! I never make any artificial limits, 'levels' of coaching or anything like that. However I can help you, I will! Communication, training plan adjustments – it's all unlimited. Need to text for urgent plan adjustments? Do it! Want to have an in-depth Zoom chat prior to your big race? Let's go! I'm also happy to chat about anything that you think will help you. Some things I've talked about with athletes: gear, nutrition, exercise physiology, long-term planning. motivation, psychology, how to get more involved in the running community, nutrition basics, how to get a sponsor or ambassadorship, how to quit your job and become self-employed... and lots more. You can view my full coaching and training philosophy here, or schedule a chat and we can talk in-depth!

First, and most importantly: I do not write training plans – I coach athletes. That statement seems loaded doesn't it? It sure is! Here's the difference. A training plan implies that you know how a training block will go prior to it beginning. That's simply impossible. The very best training adjusts for not only your fitness level and new knowledge about your strengths and weaknesses, but also other stresses in your life! It doesn't view life as a barrier to good training, it adjusts to best make use of those changes in your life. Here are a few obvious examples: Let's say you just bought a house and need to move next week. But in the plan, it was written in as a build week. Is that realistic? NO! Make it a down week to accommodate for that life stress. (Even good stress is still stress). Okay but now you have a vacation coming up, and you happen to be going to Colorado (you live at sea level). Great - that's now an aerobic build week! Lots of easy volume is the name of the game. Run, hike, bike, whatever. Just get the heart pumping and start making red blood cells. Now, your most stressful period at work happens to coincide with when you "should" be running one of your peak training weeks prior to your race. Should you still do that? Almost never. We can nearly always accommodate so that not only does training fit with your life better, it is better training. Second, training depends more on where you are now than where you want to be. It's easy to make this mistake. I see a lot of runners structure workouts based on their end goal, and working backward. "If I want to be running x:xx marathon pace by this date, then I should be able to run x:xx pace for workouts on this date..." It almost makes sense, right? Unfortunately; it's wrong. Training is about giving your body specific physiological stressors to prompt adaptations. If you are basing training upon your goal, you're actually getting fewer benefits, because you're not aligning with those internal physiological variables. You also risk injury or overtraining. In addition, training is non-linear. You can't simply draw a line between where you are and where you want to be. A true training progression is not only curved, but also needs to have ups and downs. That's how the body adapts! Your body doesn't care about pace or distance. Good training isn't based on distance, but rather time. Now that's not to say your plan can't have distances written down – just that whoever is designing training is thinking about the time that run is taking you rather than the distance. It also shouldn't be based on pace – you can read why here. To that end, I write the overall training plan based on whatever the athlete's preference is: miles, kilometers or time. But workouts are always given as effort and time ranges. For example, no athlete does 400m repeats. For each athlete, that workout would serve a totally different purpose. Instead, athletes might do 1min fast/1min easy repeats. Or 90sec fast/1min easy. Or endlessly more complex (and fun) workout variations. A bonus of this method is that you can do the workout anywhere and any time and know that you're getting the most productive workout for your body and goals. Finally, true fitness improvements are made over years, not a single training block. This means regardless of what race you have next on the schedule, we are always working on improving your fitness via science-based, proven training. Running is running, and while specificity is helpful, if you choose specificity over actual fitness gains, you will end up being less-prepared than you could be. Want to learn more or dive into the nitty gritty? Schedule a consultation!