The thing to remember about online coaching is that they will never see your workouts, take A LOT longer to get to know you and your capabilities, and have very, very limited information about you and how you are responding to workouts. So you send them your workout times...what was the weather like? Etc etc.

I've tried 2 different online coaches. The first one was a former Olympian and for a long time it worked pretty well....but we also talked on the phone a minimum of 1X per week. However, when things began to go less than well, my coach thought it was normal peak training fatigue and blew it off though I tried to tell him it was something more. Then our communications slackened as he got busy for awhile, and I ended up overtrained and blew up before my goal marathon as a result. If he'd seen what I looked at after my runs, this never would have happened. Not really his fault in particular, comes with the online territory.

The second was again a very, very reputable coach (and more expensive). This time things never really went very well. I'd not be able to hit workout times, but no adjustments would be made in the times asked of me for the following workouts...very little collaborative regulation of the workouts at all. I was very disappointed in this experience.

If you really feel you cannot put together your own schedule to make progress, and you just need someone to put together decent schedules for you that you can modify slightly to the weather and your conditioning, then maybe it would be good for you. In general, however, I recommend people take decent local coaching over a bigger name internet coach.

I've been an online coach in the past. I'm not currently taking new runners, so please don't think I'm fishing for business! I myself have been coached by great coaches, and I was also self-coached for a number of years.

As others have mentioned, online coaching doesn't work as well as coaching in person. I would generally take a pretty good local coach over a great online coach, assuming a good fit between the runner and the coach. But, if you don't have a good local option, I do think an online coach is usually better than no coach at all. For even a very experienced runner a second set of eyes can help a lot.

I should mention that "online" is a relative term. I often found that phone conversations were critical to success. A single phone call could cover a series of questions and answers better than a dozen emails.

Another critical aspect is reaching the point where the runner understands the plan well enough to make adjustments on the fly. The coach can't see everything or respond immediately, so the athlete needs enough information to decide what to do if a workout goes poorly or needs to be rescheduled. That means the coach needs to not only provide at least a few days of schedule in advance, but also explain exactly why the training is what it is, and the rules for changing on the fly. Even making a strong effort to do this as a coach, I've had runners get in trouble by going off on a tangent for a few days without me being aware of it. I had a runner miss a hard run with a schedule conflict, so she "made it up" by adding it on top of her recovery run on a day between a hard run and a race. Of course the race went poorly, which frustrated her enough she did a time-trial the next day. With 4 hard days in a row, she got injured. The way to avoid this is runner education, or daily contact.

I've never heard of 2L, so I don't know what their program is of what it costs. I charged $40 a month, but would likely charge significantly more if I got back into it now. $40-$50 a month is fairly typical, but the level of service varies dramatically. Some coaches would just give you a schedule, plus an email every week or so for that. Others like me would review training logs every few days, adjust the schedule on the fly, have several emails a week, and several phone calls a month for that. Most coaches are a huge bargain for the runner, and something the coachs do just because they enjoy it and have some other source of income.


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I think either way sounds reasonable. The key is a slow build-up to let your body adjust to the additional stresses.

You mentioned a 12 week training plan for a HM starting in June, are you by any chance going to be training for the Air Force HM??

After Boston and then some recovery time, I'll be base building until 25 Jun when I'll start a 12 week training program for the AF HM!

rs

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Smart Coach is only so smart....use it as a starting point only. Your plan sounds fine to me.