Don't be a one trick pony
When short and long distances collide
Same effort. Same rhythm. Same gear.
Many beginner endurance athletes approach training this way under the impression that simply accumulating miles will automatically lead to improvement. And to be honest, it’s a pretty sound approach for a while.
You may go a full season or two where showing up is the primary driver of progress. Compounding volume builds durability. It raises your ceiling in a very real way.
But there’s a second factor that starts to matter more as you develop: versatility. This is what begins to separate steady improvement from breakthrough performance (I know you’re looking for that breakthrough)
This week, we’ll look at the idea of Range and Reserve, and why this might be one of the rare cases where it actually does make sense to copy the elites. Elites may have more fitness than you, but they also can access a wide range of gears in speed, pace, power and you have access to that luxury too when you focus in the right places.
What do we mean by “Range”?
Before we go any further, we need to define what we’re actually talking about.
“Range” isn’t just about being able to run fast or go long. Most athletes can do one of those reasonably well.
Range is the ability to competently access a wide spectrum of speeds.
Not just touching them once in a while, but owning them. To the point where you can perform reasonably well in a 5K or a marathon without a significant program overhaul.
At one end, you’ve got:
Short, fast efforts
High cadence, high power
Neuromuscular demand
At the other:
Aerobic efficiency
Durability
The ability to sit on a pace for hours
If you always live in the middle ground, grinding out somewhat easy effort, you will absolutely become good at that somewhat easy effort. This may be plenty to deliver a respectable marathon or Ironman.
As I have said in the past, your first long distance race will not necessarily have a race pace but rather be a challenge to sustain easy pace for as long as possible. But if you want to keep improving, that easy pace needs to demand less of you and you will need to look to both ends of the spectrum as well as the middle ground from time to time.
How do we do this? That’s where developing Reserve comes in.
What do we mean by “Reserve”?
If range is the spectrum of speeds you can access, reserve is how much of yourself you have to spend at any given pace.
It’s the difference between working at your limit and working well below it.
Two athletes can run the exact same marathon pace. One is locked in, managing fatigue from mile one. The other looks controlled, relaxed, almost like they’re holding something back.
Reserve is what allows race pace to feel sustainable instead of fragile. At the end of the day, you can only sustain what you have trained to sustain. You don’t just dream up a pace and go.
Key point—
Reserve is built by expanding your range.
When you improve your top-end speed:
Submaximal paces become less taxing
Your stride becomes more economical
You spend less energy to produce the same output
When you develop the lower end:
You delay fatigue
You improve durability
You extend how long you can sit at a given effort
Put those together, and something powerful happens: The pace that used to define your limit becomes something you can control. And I know you love being in control.
Building Range and creating Reserve
Athletes can overcomplicate this.
Building range doesn’t require blowing up your program or suddenly training like a middle-distance runner. In fact, if you’re preparing for a marathon or Ironman, most of your training should still look… pretty familiar.
We’re not replacing the middle but rather expanding around it.
Here’s how I like to approach it with athletes:
1. Keep the middle, but stop living there exclusively
Your aerobic work still matters. A lot.
Easy volume
Long runs/rides
Some steady/tempo work
That’s your foundation. That’s what allows you to show up consistently and absorb training.
But once that base is in place, doing more of the same gives you diminishing returns.
So instead of asking:
“How can I add more volume?”
Start asking:
“Where am I not training?”
2. Touch speed frequently (without making it a big deal)
This is the lowest hanging fruit.
You don’t need brutal track sessions to build range. Speed is a skill that you can dabble with. You just need consistent exposure to faster paces.
Simple ways to do it:
Strides 2–3x/week (15–25 seconds, full recovery)
Short hill sprints (8–12 seconds, powerful, not exhausting)
Fast segments at the end of easy runs
These don’t create much fatigue, but they:
Improve neuromuscular coordination
Reinforce mechanics
Keep your top-end from disappearing
Think of this as keeping the lights on for your speed.
3. Integrate, don’t isolate
This is probably the biggest thing I emphasize with athletes.
You don’t need:
A “speed phase”
Then an “endurance phase”
Then hope it all comes together
Instead, we keep small doses of everything in the program year-round.
Touch speed weekly
Maintain aerobic volume
Periodically challenge the top end
Because range isn’t something you build once.
It’s something you maintain.
The key is dosage: You do not need hard VO2max intervals every single week. Similarly, you do not need a long run every single week. This is why I am an advocate of expanding your timelines such as the suggestion in article below. Look at the body of work you accumulate every 21, 28, 45 days, for example.
4. The gut check
A simple way to know if this is working:
Does your easy pace feel easier at the same heart rate?
Does tempo feel more controlled instead of fragile?
Can you change gears late in a session or race?
If the answer is yes, you’re building reserve.
If everything still feels like a grind, maybe you need to give your range focus some more time.
At some point, progress demands more than just showing up and logging miles. It demands range. And when you build range, you create reserve.
That’s what allows race pace to feel controlled instead of costly. That’s what gives you options late in a race instead of forcing you to hang on.