Success in endurance events is down to many factors: some obvious, some less so. Here’s a few of them:

1. raw talent (genetics)
2. mental attitude (motivation, goals)
3. nutrition
4. structured training
5. consistency

Many would think that raw talent is the most important factor in this list. I disagree - although I believe all of the factors listed are vital and could fill several articles in their own right. I am more and more of the opinion that consistency is the key.

Endurance athletes are not made overnight - it takes consistent training over many months and indeed years to build the physical strength and adaptations necessary for events such as the marathon or the Ironman. I hasten to add that I’m not an Ironman (yet), but I have done the odd marathon and I’m sure the principles are the same, in fact probably even more so due to the additional stresses on your body.

However there is one major barrier to consistency.

For most mortals it’s motivation, but triathletes are a breed apart - these are not typically lazy people. In fact their problem is, more often than not, too much motivation. This leads us to our answer: the biggest barrier to consistency and therefore to athletic success is injury.

If you disagree, just take a quick poll of your tri friends - probably well over 50% of them are hampered by varying degrees of injury and several of them are actively incapacitated. If you’re lucky enough to be in the uninjured half, what can you do to avoid this pervasive trap?

Here are my tips (marathon specific!) for avoiding those irritating breaks in your carefully planned training schedule:

Get the Right Shoes
This is probably the single most important piece of advice I can give. Running is a high impact activity and your shoes are the only protection between you and the pavements you’re pounding.

Stilettos are not usually recommended footwear for running in

Go to a professional shop, get your gait professionally analysed with a video and treadmill - I found Profeet to be especially good at this, although they do charge for the service (* see note below). Ensure the assistant is experienced and knowledgeable - not a weekend temp. Try on lots of the brands that are recommended and then very carefully make the most important decision of your running career. Once you’ve found the right model for you, use it until the manufacturers don’t produce them anymore and the shops have sold out of them.

Once you have the right shoes, make sure you change them regularly, which means every 400-500 miles no matter how good the shoes look. At the moment a pair of shoes lasts me between 2-3 months. If you’ve had your shoes longer than 6 months, ditch them NOW - a pair of shoes is way cheaper than weekly visits to a physio.

Build Slowly
Building strength and endurance takes time - there are no shortcuts. If you try too much too soon, you’re asking for trouble.

A good rule of thumb is to increase either intensity or volume by 10% a week (though best not both). That can seem very slow if you want results quickly, but many is the time I’ve injured myself by stepping up a program too rapidly.

Don’t Be a Hero
During training that is - be a hero on race day. Does it matter if you beat your training partner on the final lap of an interval session in an all out sprint? Well, not if you lose several weeks out of your program due to an aggravated hamstring (yeah, I’ve done that one).

Hard sessions should be controlled sessions - for endurance athletes you should never be training at 100% intensity.

Not being a hero is also not submitting to the peer pressure of what everyone else is doing. Many around you will regale you with their Herculean efforts and you’ll feel the need to keep up - don’t. You don’t know what they’ve done to get to where they are, or indeed how close they are to an incapacitating injury. Stick to your own plan.

Get Rest
This is the biggest problem for motivated athletes - they feel that they should be training every day and that a ‘zero’ day is a day lost. They feel that every day they should be pushing their body to the max and be finishing every session exhausted.

We all need to get plenty of rest

What we need to realise is that our bodies do not get stronger while we train. Let me repeat that: we do NOT get stronger while we train. What happens is that we stress our bodies and then during the recovery period our bodies get stronger, so that we can stress our bodies more next time.

It’s a constant process of breaking down and then building back up again. If all we do is train without sufficient rest, then all we do is break ourselves down and that’s when you’re going to be seeing more of your physio than your training buddies.

Include rest days in your program - when you’re sitting down watching the 8th episode of 24 in a row, just think you’re actually growing stronger than if you were out on a 5hr bike. Of course you can have too much rest, but this is actually less destructive than too little!

Listen to Your Body
It’s easy to ignore the signals: the slight niggle, the sniffle, the feeling of tiredness on a session you usually find easy. Triathletes are hard, they don’t like to complain, they fight through.

But you need to listen to those signals or else the niggle becomes an ITB problem or the sniffle a full blown bout of flu.

To sum up:

1. Get the Right Shoes
2. Build Slowly
3. Don’t Be a Hero
4. Get Rest
5. Listen to Your Body

I’ve made mistakes (and indeed continue to) in all of these areas, but I am getting wiser and more careful - I hope this article will help you avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve experienced.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: ask any serious athlete what they would prefer: £5,000 of top notch kit or 12 months of consistent injury free training. With one you can kill the opposition and make serious dents in your PBs, with the other you’re just another joe with all the gear and no idea.