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Run By Numbers

Build, Don’t Borrow · by Shawn Siemers

Build a training system you can explain, defend, and adapt.

The distance coach’s guide to turning 23 foundational questions into a coaching system you understand, so you know what to change when the season changes.

Buy on AmazonRead the opening chapter free

How many of the 23 can you answer today?

The cover of Build, Don’t Borrow: The Distance Coach’s Guide to Training Architecture, by Shawn Siemers

You do not need another workout. You need to know how the pieces fit.

Your notebook is full. You have clinic handouts, training books, saved posts, and workouts from successful programs.

You can build a calendar from those pieces. The hard part comes when an athlete does not respond the way you expected.

A workout from a State championship program feels safer because you know it worked for someone. But you do not know what made it work for that team, why it belonged in that week, or what the coach would have changed if it failed.

You have the pieces. What you are missing is the structure that connects them.

  1. Layer 1The systemthe zone it trains
  2. Layer 2The pacethe race pace it’s built around
  3. Layer 3The roleits job in the progression
One workout

Borrowed plans work until your season stops looking like theirs.

The athlete gets sick. The heat changes the workout. A race exposes a weakness you did not expect. One training group progresses while another stalls.

Now you have to decide what to keep, what to change, and what can wait. A borrowed plan cannot explain its decisions to you.

So you cut the mileage, add speed, move the long run, or rewrite the taper. The change may work. But if it does, you still may not know why.

If it’s yours and it breaks, you learn. If it’s borrowed and it breaks, you’re lost.

Build, Don’t Borrow helps you make those decisions for yourself.

This book teaches the thinking that produces the plan.

Twenty-three connected questions take you from the athlete you want to develop to the workouts, progressions, and decisions that can get them there.

  1. 01

    Define what you are building

    Start with the runner and program you want to create, then identify what must change to get there.

  2. 02

    Connect the decisions

    Work through the systems, paces, cycles, weekly patterns, progressions, recovery, taper, and athlete pipeline that shape the season.

  3. 03

    Build a system that is yours

    Turn your answers into a structure you understand well enough to explain, defend, and adapt.

The book does not hand you a finished architecture. It walks you through the questions so your architecture forms from your athletes, your philosophy, and your decisions.

Fixed target. No fixed path.

Finish with more than a complete calendar.

By the final chapter, you will have the major pieces of a training system and a reason for every piece you chose.

  • A destination that gives every training decision a purpose
  • Clear definitions for the systems you train and the paces you use
  • A season structure that connects cycles, weeks, workouts, and recovery
  • Progressions with starting points, goal points, and reasons for each step
  • A taper and race-execution model that matches what you built all season
  • A development pipeline that helps new runners become lasting contributors

When the season changes, you can adjust the part that no longer fits without throwing away everything around it.

I wrote the book I needed when I was coaching from a pile of other people’s answers.

From 2010 to 2012, I read everything, attended every clinic I could, and collected workouts from every successful coach who would share them.

I had plenty of information. I could not see how the pieces connected. If a workout worked, I could not always explain why. If it failed, I did not know what had broken.

The 23 questions in this book began as my attempt to close the gap between coaching philosophy and the decisions written on the calendar.

Twenty years coaching cross country and track at Texas 6A schools

Nine straight cross country State qualifications, individual State champions, and a first career designing software systems.

What beta readers recognized

  • “Architecture is missing from my program, this describes it perfectly. Held together by hope.”
    BETA READER, ON CHAPTER 1
  • “Best explanation of these concepts I've ever read.”
    BETA READER, ON THE TRAINING-SYSTEMS CHAPTER
  • “This is golden, and something I wish someone would have told me my first years.”
    CROSS COUNTRY COACH IN MINNESOTA
  • “When it hits the shelves I want my assistant coaches to read it. I want them to challenge me and themselves to build something better.”
    BETA READER, ON THE FINAL CHAPTER

Try it on yourself

How many of the 23 can you answer today?

These are the book’s questions, word for word. Mark the ones you could explain for your own program. Your answers stay in this browser.

Part 1: The Impossible Goal

Part 3: The Training Model

Part 4: The Athlete Development Pipeline

See every question before you buy.

Twenty-seven chapters across five connected parts, from defining the destination to building the athlete pipeline.

ContentsThe complete table of contents

Introduction

  1. 1Distance Training Has an Architecture

Part 1: The Impossible Goal

  1. 2What Are We Building Toward?

Part 2: The Training Architect

  1. 3The Coach-Architect

Part 3: The Training Model

  1. 4How Do You Define Each System? What Is Its Relationship to Other Systems?
  2. 5Why Are Some Paces Described in Physiological Terms and Others With Race Paces? How Do They Relate?
  3. 6Is There an 800, 1600, 3200, 5K Profile of a Successful Runner?
  4. 7How Long Is Each Training Cycle?
  5. 8What Order Should Systems Be Progressed?
  6. 9How Do You Know Which Combination of Systems to Use? And When?
  7. 10How Do You Balance Training?
  8. 11Is There a Methodology?
  9. 12Are There Training Patterns to Follow?
  10. 13How Do You Manage Progressions Within a Cycle? From Cycle to Cycle?
  11. 14How Much Recovery for Each System?
  12. 15How Long Should Each Work Unit Be?
  13. 16How Do You Choose a Starting Point? A Goal Point?
  14. 17Is There a Menu of Workouts for Each System? And a Planned Progression?
  15. 18How Many Iterations? What Is the Goal of Each Iteration?
  16. 19Do You Plan by Pace or by System?
  17. 20How Long for Each Pace? What Pace Do You Emphasize in Which Cycle?
  18. 21What Does a Sample 1-Week or 2-Week Pattern Look Like?
  19. 22How Do You Coach Tactics for Each Type of Race?
  20. 23What Do You Do for Strength Training?
  21. 24How Do You Taper?

Part 4: The Athlete Development Pipeline

  1. 25How Do You Start New Runners?

Part 5: The Feedback System

  1. 26The Architecture Must Be Built Before You Can Measure It
  2. 27If It’s Yours and It Breaks, You Learn. If It’s Borrowed and It Breaks, You’re Lost.

The book and the app do different jobs.

The book is about deciding what your training should be. What you’re building toward, the systems and paces you train, and how the season fits together.

Run By Numbers helps you run that training for every runner. Each runner’s targets, what happened in the workout, and how they responded, kept together across the season.

You don’t need the book to use the app, or the app to get something out of the book. Founding yearly plans include a digital copy.

See how Run By Numbers worksPricing

Read the opening chapter free.

I’ll email you the Introduction and the complete first chapter. You will see the problem the book solves, where Training Architecture begins, and whether the rest of the book is for you.

We’ll also send you the occasional email about Run By Numbers. Every one has an unsubscribe link, so you can stop them any time. What we do with this

Or buy the whole book on Amazon.

Your athletes graduate. What you learned stays with you.