On Monday Yuki Kawauchi shocked the running world and won the Boston Marathon against a world class field full of faster Kenyans. how did he do it, mental toughness and good old fashioned heart. The conditions were horrendous but the same for all runners and Yuki just put his foot down at the end and destroyed the field of Kenyans, winning by nearly three minutes. There really are no superlatives to describe this legend of the marathon running elite world. He has run over 79 marathons under 2 hours 20 minutes, a World Record, and Boston was his 4th this year with many more booked in for the later in the year.  I’m sure the $150,000 pay day for wining Boston will come in very handy for the ‘citizen runner‘ , plus the millions he is probably going to earn in endorsements now, and every cent well earned and deserved.

So what’s his secret ? How does he do what he does while holding down a full time job, with no sponsorship and self coached ? The answer is distance, with his tempo/thresholds reserved for racing. Lots of time on feet, jogging, as he calls it. To me I call it the Maffetone method, the foundation of his running built on ‘time on leg’s , albeit only once  a day rather than the two or three times reserved for the ‘normal’ elite athletes. Yuki has built a massive aerobic fitness and by racing marathons and half marathons on a regular basis he takes cares of his anaerobic needs. Very similar to the way I train , though he seems to be a bit better at it, I put that down to his age and can only assume if I was thirty I would be competing with him , at least for the first 40-50 metres ! ?

With more of the same to come in the later half of 2018….

As you can see from his weekly training 80% is at nice and easy 5min/k (well easy for Yuki anyway.)  (80/20 now there an idea…  https://mattfitzgerald.org) Around 80-100km at this relaxed pace with one day of speed work in the middle of the week and then racing and/or trails on the weekend. Probably running between 130-160k a week. Nothing unusual about this bar the results. Truth be told he runs a similar week to me but the end results are chalk and cheese. Must be natural talent I’m missing, only explanation surely ? This backs up many of my posts on ‘time on legs running’ as well as the benefits of racing with a bib on your chest. Both of these training tips are ingrained in Yuki’s training program, so it’s not just me.

What else has Yuki got to make a difference, a heart of a lion. He regularly pushes himself to his limit and this is another one of my main golden rules, mental toughness. Marathon racing is as much a mental race as a physical one. You need to master both to succeed, it doesn’t how much training you put in when you are a marathon there will be time in the ‘pain box‘ and you choose how long you can spend in there, the longer the better.

I met Yuki in 2015 when he ran the Perth City to Surf Marathon as defending champion after winning in 2014. He won of course and went past the Kenyans on the last hill like they were standing still, apparently. I was a few minutes behind (about 30 of them !) so only have the words of spectators to go by. It summed up his running, waiting until the last few kilometres before making his move. This is the way he runs, asking the questions to his competitors in a similar way that the American middle distance runner Steve Prefontaine would do in the seventies.  It’s a pity the Perth City to Surf dropped the prize money in 2016 as Yuki was then unable to come over and go for a three-peat. Remember he has a full time job and only travels if there is prize money to justify his trip. To further cement his legend status after the race he accepted an invite from the TRC runners for a few beers. ( http://therunningcentre.com.au/  ) He then held court, with a translator, before hot footing it  to the airport for an evening flight to get to work the next day. (I’m assuming he took a taxi?)

So to sum up the point of this post, nice guys can and do win, Yuki trains like us mere mortals and achieve amazing results with his mental strength. I’m not saying we can match his achievements but we can learn from his training program, training once a day , time on feet runs and plenty of racing. He may have been the last one standing on a Boston Marathon that was brutal due to the weather conditions and it may  have played into his hands but he still had to step up when the chips were down. His mental strength was there for all to see as he out kicked a top class Kenyan in the last two kilometres of perhaps the biggest marathon in the world.  Next time you’re racing and things start to get tough think about Yuki and ask ‘what would Yuki do‘ ?