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TRAINING BREAKDOWN:
“Short-term training for long-term endurance goals exposes you to long-term problems.”
By Emma O’Toole
Hi everyone,
If you’re reading this newsletter, I’d hazard a guess that running or cycling isn’t something you “just do.”
It’s part of your life… and you want to keep it that way.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with training for the short-term.
For example:
You want to run a marathon → you train → you get your medal → and maybe you never really run again.
That’s fine; however, that is not who this newsletter is for.
This is for those of you who want more than a medal. Those of you who want to get stronger, fitter, faster, and more resilient year after year. Training is woven into your life and the challenge of running and cycling, setting and reaching new goals is what keeps you motivated.
The downfall that many runners and cyclists make here is they want long-term progress, but are, often unknowingly to themselves, training in short-term ways.
And that’s exactly where things start to unravel.
Short-term vs long-term training:
Short-term training for long-term endurance goals exposes you to long-term problems. That’s a sentence that I had to re-read a few times! But let’s break that down-
Training for the long-term requires:
Patience.
Steady progress.
Respecting the distances.
Knowing when to push forward and knowing when to pull back.
Short-term training does the opposite:
Big spikes in volume.
Big swings in intensity.
Too much too soon.
No strength foundation.
Inconsistent accountability.
Training with your ego, not your physiology.
Short-term training is the perfect recipe for:
Niggles.
Overuse injuries.
Inconsistent fitness.
Burnout.
And “I just can’t seem to make progress” cycles.
There are no shortcuts in running and cycling, especially if you still want to be doing them 5, 10, 20 years from now.
Respecting the distance
You’d be shocked by how many people pick a goal race that is far beyond their current capacity.
Wanting to run a marathon is brilliant.
Running one in 16 weeks off the back of completing couch to 5k is not.
Audaxes are great fun.
Signing up for a single-day 200km audax in 6 weeks time when your longest ride is 50km is not so much fun.
These distances give you what you put into them, and a huge element of that is time.
Let’s take the marathon. It’s 20 weeks today to London Marathon 2026 - if you’re starting from 5km and build up 1 mile a week on your long runs that gives you a long run of around 20-21 miles taking off race day and your taper.
Sounds good? Decent for a marathon long run training plan.
However, it’s not. In that progression you need to remind yourself that you’re asking your body to PR a new distance week on week, that’s a huge ask. That progression also doesn’t provide scope for rest/deload weeks to allow your body to adapt to the training.
Short-term thinking says:
“I’ll get it done regardless of the consequences.”
Long-term thinking says:
“I’ll build up sensibly so I can keep doing this sport without breaking down physically and mentally.”
Strength training
And then there’s strength training…
You’ve seen the posts:
“Top 5 strength exercises every cyclist should do”
“This one exercise will make you run faster”
“Do this to fix your knee pain!”
They might be right, but they also might be wildly wrong… because the person creating that reel knows nothing about you.
A strength exercise isn’t “good” or “bad.”
It’s only effective if it’s the right thing for the right athlete at the right time.
That’s long-term training thinking.
Steady progress beats big swings and progress is not linear
Long-term runners and cyclists get consistently good at chasing little wins and stacking them up one by one, think metres here not kilometres.
Something often overlooked is that long-term progress is not linear; setbacks are part of the journey.
You will have:
Weeks where everything clicks.
Weeks where nothing does.
Weeks where life gets in the way.
Weeks where your legs feel like concrete.
And weeks where you question everything.
None of that means you’re failing or your training plan isn’t working. It means you’re human, and you’re training for the long-term. You’ve only got to look at the pros to know that setbacks are a part of the journey. They don’t panic because they know they’re in it for the long run and this is a little bump in the road.
This is what steady progress looks like:
Adding 10-15 minutes to a long run instead of doubling it because you can.
Lifting 2.5kg more instead of 20kg because you can.
Sticking to your training plan and not adding one more interval because you can.
Taking a deload week instead of ploughing on through because you can.
Not jumping from no strength training to heavy barbell work because you can.
Cross-training and not training through pain because you can.
“Because you can” might feel good in the moment, but it won’t feel good in the long-term, nor will it help your progress.
Progress is never linear
How to make long-term training possible
Life happens.
Work happens.
Kids, sleep, stress, motivation… it all fluctuates.
Short-term training falls apart when life gets inconvenient, whereas long-term training survives and thrives because of:
Coaching,
Structure,
Experience,
Accountability,
Support through the highs and lows.
The best way to make long-term training possible is to stay accountable. This is why so many runners and cyclists make huge progress when they join coaching or a structured community.
Accountability also comes in the form of “holding you back”. It takes a good coach to tell you to not attempt that distance/race/event right now because that coach wants to see you succeed in the long-term and not get hurt.
If running or cycling is something you want in your life for the next decade (and beyond), if you want to keep collecting medals and getting stronger, faster, and fitter year after year, if you want training to enhance your life then you need to train in a way that supports the long game.
Long-term runners and cyclists aren’t made through shortcuts, hero weeks, or the top-5 exercises someone posted on Instagram.
They’re made through:
Steady progression.
Consistent strength training.
Respecting the distances.
Navigating setbacks.
Staying accountable.
And training in a way you can repeat next week, next month, next year
Free challenge!
If you want help staying consistent through one of the hardest times of year, I’ve created a running, cycling and strength training consistency challenge in my free community for runners and cyclists over 30- join in and start making long-term progress!
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
Emma x
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