Nike Run Coach Chris Bennett’s Best Training Hack? Know When to Pivot.

7 min readTHERE ARE FEW moments in a runner’s life that can compare to the excitement that surrounds the delivery of the training plan. It’s all laid out there. Day by day and week to week. Month after month of detailed training that if done and done well will supposedly lead to the promised land, or at least a promised result. Do this many minutes at this pace on this day and follow that with this many intervals for this many meters at this effort with this amount of recovery and follow that with something else just as specific. It’s basically a treasure map for runners. And X marks not just the spot where you’ll find the starting line of a race but also a goal time or place achieved by the time you make it to the finish line. Just follow the trail—er…training plan, and you’ll get to where you want to be. Guaranteed.Therein lies the problem with athletes and their training plans. And not just because the premise is false. It is. It most definitely is. Nothing is guaranteed. Especially when it comes to running. The moment you cross that starting line, guarantees become an unsound concept espoused by coaching charlatans. Just about anything can happen on the other side of that line. That means you need to be ready to anticipate changes and then adjust as needed. But what I can guarantee is that you’re going to deviate from your sacred training plan over the course of your training. So let’s clear this up once and for all. Training plans may be made by coaches. But the real coaching that takes place has to do with changes and adjustments to the training plan. It’s no different with the best-laid plans outside of running. Sometimes there’s traffic up ahead and you need to take a different route to get to where you want to go. Sometimes you have a date night out on the town but one of the kids gets sick and date night becomes game night at the kitchen table. It’s life. And life doesn’t happen sometimes. It happens all the time. So it’s best to be prepared with a plan. And the best plan is to be prepared to change plans if needed.I know. Many of you are aghast. The PDF you printed out is complete. There are no fill-in-the-blank portions. You were not given access to edit said PDF either. And would you even if you could? A real-life coach made that training plan! They sat there and wrote out exactly what you are supposed to do to reach running nirvana. It’s a masterpiece, for crying out loud. Do you think little Jim Hawkins drew his own X’s on Captain Flint’s treasure map? No way! And right now I’m really hoping you read Treasure Island recently. Doesn’t matter though. I’m not stopping. The point is that most runners see the training plan as infallible. It’s been passed down to them from on high and therefore any departure from that plan is not only a change in direction but also a move in the wrong direction.IT’S IMPORTANT TO remember that training plans are usually written in a climate-controlled room with the author of the plan drinking a nice cold iced tea. I speak from experience here. We coaches map out the eight-or ten-or 18-week plans under the assumption that nothing will go wrong. Personally, I start at the finish line. If the goal is running a half marathon in under two hours, that’s where I start—there with you as you cross the finish line on race day clocking in 21.1K of distance running at 1:59:52. You’re crying tears of joy. I’m crying tears of joy. Your friends and family are crying tears of joy. Everyone is so happy. So, that’s the first part of the training plan I write. And there’s a bonus to writing the plan this way. Now we know where we’re trying to go. We know the general direction in which we’ll need to travel in order to get there too. And the farther away we are from the stated destination, the more flexible we can be with the way we get there. All avenues are open and available at this point. When you are setting a goal, any kind of goal, the more rigid the training plan, the more likely that at some point it will break.Then I move backward. What do we need to do the day before to set up race day? What kind of endurance do you need by race day to accomplish what it is that you want to accomplish on race day? How much endurance do you need two weeks out to be on pace to have the endurance you need on race day? How about six weeks out? What about speed? Mental callusing? How much strength do you need to be able to do the training you need to do in week four or ten? We’re going to need to work on getting stronger before week four or ten then, right? And this goes on as I move backward through the training plan, making sure you are doing what you need to do so you can move forward through it. And eventually we arrive at who you are today and what you can do today in order to move through that plan we just created. That now tells us how long it will take to get to where you want to go and become who you want to be.I NEED TO anticipate what kind of runner you are going to need to be to achieve the goal. But here’s the thing: none of it is real. You haven’t done any of it yet. It’s all hypothetical. Because training plans live in the future. We don’t. We live in the here and now. And here and now is where rolled ankles live. And it’s where the flu and colds and fevers hang out. Here and now is where arguments take place and traffic jams happen and tests are failed, and jobs are lost and relationships are broken. Here is where life happens. And life doesn’t follow your training plan.Which is why I write all my training plans in pencil. I know there will be changes. I know that there will be adjustments. I know there will be so much that happens over the course of the training plan that will be unplanned. That’s why I need to be flexible. And that’s why I need an eraser. It may just be changing the day that we do the speed run. It may mean skipping the speed run altogether. It may mean simply changing the speed run that we’re doing from a tempo run to a fartlek. You see, that’s what coaching really is. It’s not coming up with a training plan. It’s adjusting the training plan as needed so you can get to that starting line as close as possible to the best version of yourself.And let me say this here and now as well: not all adjustments are changes resulting from something negative happening, like an injury or sickness or dangerous weather conditions. Sometimes the adjustments to the training plan are a result of you progressing faster than we thought you would. Sometimes we adjust the training plan not because you’ve broken down but rather because you’ve broken through. Many athletes have just as hard a time, if not a harder time, making those kinds of adjustments. Yes, even unplanned improvements can demand changes in a training plan, and those changes also freak people out.Unless, of course, they know that every treasure map is really just a crude set of directions that hopefully gets us to where we want to be. I can assure you that over the course of any training plan we’re going to sail through some storms that will temporarily set us off course, and we’re going to need to overcome unforeseen obstacles on our way to the loot we hope is buried at the finish line. None of those things are going to be found on a map or in a training plan. Because a map, like a training plan, only tells us where we are trying to get to. It doesn’t tell us what we need to get through to get there. That’s when you don’t need a map, you need a coach—a coach with a pencil.This is true beyond those start and finishing lines you run between too. Because anything you go after in life will surely not only demand a plan but, more important, demand flexibility. And flexibility with a plan demands faith, hope, and patience. All essential ingredients for success in running (or anything else that matters in life). Remember, that pencil we’re writing your training plan with has an eraser for a reason. Sometimes it’s used to correct a mistake. And sometimes it’s used to write down a better idea or answer. What matters is that we know it’s there. What matters is that we know we can use it. Because what matters is you.Harper CollinsExcerpted from the book This Is About Running. This Is Not About Running, by Chris Bennett. Copyright © 2026 by Christopher Patrick Bennett. From Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.