I didn't give myself enough breaks during the training year to recover. I didn't understand the power of periodization.

With my runners now, they get two month-long breaks during the year.

I've found that my athletes run their best races after about 10 weeks of intense training.

I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging.

Early in my career I was accused of being overconfident and even cocky, but I really was confident that I had done the training and didn't see any other reason to say otherwise.

An athlete who tells you the training is always easy and always fun simply hasn't been there. Goals can be elusive which makes the difficult journey all the more rewarding.