Member-only story

How a Coach Is Benefitting My Running

Personalized attention and accountability

Ryan Fan
4 min readDec 10, 2021
Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

After my last marathon, I finally gave in to one of my friend’s requests: to have her as my running coach.

For the last two years ever since graduating college, I’ve been an independent runner. I’ve been more of a hobby jogger. I do whatever I want as a runner, and I run on days I feel like, and don’t run on days I don’t feel like. On my easy runs, it sometimes looks like I’m barely moving my feet at a 9-minute or 10-minute mile pace. I do workouts sometimes whenever I feel like it.

I will admit I’m largely a follower when it comes to running. I strongly dislike running alone. I don’t like it when I have to trot out in the cold and wind to run 12 miles by myself, so I often just do whatever workout a friend had by design.

But now that I have a coach, I won’t say my training is better or worse than it was before. I will say it’s more structured, and I’m more likely to go out to run when I don’t feel like it.

My coach is faster than me, and she’s a very experienced runner. She has written a couple of workouts so far but I am still recovering from my last marathon. She’s also coaching me for free and because she wants to see me get better, so I luck out of having to pay for a coach.

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Ryan Fan
Ryan Fan

Written by Ryan Fan

Believer, Baltimore City IEP Chair, and 2:35 marathon runner. Diehard fan of “The Wire.”

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