Sagely Advice

The legendary Haile Gebrselassie has 13 training sessions a week. On Sunday he runs ONLY once. He also said that each week, he tries to do 3 speed sessions, one long run (1½/2 hours) and one or two Fartlek sessions while the rest of the sessions are endurance runs to help his muscles to recover from the hard training. Before you try emulating him, read the following extract from an interview conducted by BBC-Online last year.

When asked what has been the best advice he had had, Gebrselassie replied:

"Actually, there are two important pieces that helped me a lot:

1. Work hard! This is what my father has always told me. Nothing comes for free, so if you want to achieve something you will have to work hard.

2. Take your time! This was the first advice of my manager Jos Hermens. He explained to me that if you work hard and make the right choices, things will come your way.

In the beginning of my career I thought I could run a race every week. I felt great and wanted to show people how fast I could run.

Jos taught me not to run too many races and to train and rest well. When I started to do this, my performances got even better!"

You can read more of the interview here.