I often compare runners to football clubs. Bear with me.

A football club needs to understand their potential and also their limitations. As a Norwich City fan I understand this well. We ain’t winning the Premier League title anytime soon. Especially when we’re not even in the Premier League.

Unless you’ve got Deadpool and his mates investing money, meteoric rises through the divisions are rare. Much like being a runner. You’re not going to go from doing a 25 minute 5k to winning races in a few years. Unless you have super powers that is.

So first and foremost, know your limitations and set your goals around that. Genetics, time availability, age, injury history, all come into the equation. If you have a busy job, family and history of injuries, then a marathon probably isn’t right for you. Football teams and runners that understand this, will generally achieve their targets.

Patience and consistency are then key. Premier League clubs who find themselves a good coach and remain loyal to that individual, often achieve their goals. Fulham are a great example. They’ve stuck with their manager Marco Silva for 5 years now and have finished 10th, 13th and 11th in the past 3 seasons.

Fulham currently sit 12th in the table, they’ve won fewer games than they have lost, scored fewer goals than conceded, yet remain happy with their position and status.

Other clubs gets delusions of grandeur, switching managers left right and centre. Investing crazy amounts of money to try and compete at the top.

Tottenham have had 4 managers in the past 12 months. Nottingham Forest I believe have had 5. How’s it working out for those teams (badly, for those who don’t follow football).

We can even discuss Chelsea. They’ve had 6 managers in the time Marco Silva has been at Fulham, invested over 5 times the amount on new players. Yet the two clubs are 3 points apart in the table.

I’ll get to my point. As runners we should be like Fulham football club. Firstly understand our potential and our ceiling. Then we should find a training routine, or ideally a coach who we trust and remain patient with. If we do those things we should be very happy with the outcome, much like Fulham fans are, I assume.

One of my runners Adam is a great example of this. I feel like he needed some persuading to hire me as his coach. And during our first few plans together it didn’t go the way we hoped.

He stuck to the process I set, worked hard, but the results were not quite going his way. He could easily have done what Spurs or Forest do in the Premier League and sack his coach and start again. But Adam didn’t, he took the Fulham approach.

He kept faith, he remained patient and consistent with his training. Training plan 3 it all started to come together. Firstly there was a PB at Canterbury 10 miler, the equivalent of Fulham picking up a draw away at Anfield.

Then at Lydd he produced a new half marathon PB, a win over rivals Chelsea perhaps?

Then the big one. A new marathon PB. Not only a PB but that sub 3 he’d set out to achieve. That top 10 finish that Fulham seek in the Premier League. In fact the 2:56:28 Adam ran was more like a place in Europe for the Cottagers.

Had Adam decided that after a few plans, to ditch his coach and try a different approach, who knows what the outcome might have been. Look at Tottenham, you never quite know how low you can stoop if you keep changing things up.

Adam wasn’t the only Team Orange🍊 runner at Manchester Marathon yesterday. James was running too. He completed his plan to perfection, his 1st plan with me as his coach. I was really confident James would achieve his goal of running around 3:25-3:30.

But like with football, sometimes no matter how much you prepare, you can always have an off day. James struggled with a sore hip from mile 19 onwards, forcing him to walk and run, coming home in 3:51:27.

You could argue that as his coach I let him down. But what would Fulham do if they lost at home to Wolves or Burnley? They wouldn’t sack Silva, of course not. So it’s great to hear James speaking so positively of the training and he’s sticking around for plan number 2. I’m confident if he remains patient and consistent, like Adam, like Fulham, he too will get the results he craves.

A few other mentions from the weekend, both from the Spring Half Marathon. We had PBs from Shain (1:27:47) who came home in 6th place and Sarah JT (2:23:16). Fantastic running by both.

Obviously there are coaches out their not suited to certain football teams, and that will apply with running. If you’re a casual runner, you don’t want to be coached by someone who recommends 6 runs per week. So finding that right match is important, but once you do, keep the faith, you’ll be glad you did.