Episode 33 Jonathan Marcus Zen Distance Coach

Jonathan Marcus is an American running coach, meet director, podcaster, and total running geek. Jonathan has over 15 years of experience and success developing runnings of all levels and abilities. He’s coached several US Olympic Trials and US National Championships qualifiers as well as individual champions at the high school, college, and professional levels. In 2015, Jonathan founded High-Performance West. Originally a track & field club for national class athletes based in Portland, Ore., HPW has evolved to become an online platform that strives to inform, educate, and better running coaches of all levels by publishing regular free and paid subscription content of the highest quality. In addition to coaching, Jonathan has dedicated his career in athletics to providing highly competitive opportunities for runners at the local and national levels. He is a founding meet director of notable American high-performance middle distance meets such as: Portland Track Festival, Adrian Martinez Classic, the USATF Middle Distance Classic (formerly OXY High Performance), and Sunset Tour. He also served as the elite fields coordinator for the Brooks PR Meet, an elite High School track & field meet, and the FloTrack Throwdown High-Performance Meet. In 2011, Jonathan was recognized by USATF as the Long Distance Chairman of the Year for his efforts to advance long-distance running opportunities in the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Jonathan is the co-host of the On Coaching podcast with Magness & Marcus, started in 2015 with his good friend and colleague Steve Magness. Steve and Jonathan founded the Magness & Marcus Scholar Program, a continuing education program aimed at providing distance running coaches of all levels with relevant and practical information and knowledge in the form of online courses and programs of study. His most recent project, Super Running Training, provides 1-on-1 coaching, training, recovery, and club membership services to runners of all levels and abilities. Jonathan currently holds a Level 1 Coaching Certification from USATF and Strength & Conditioning Certification from USTFCCCA. He enjoys working with runners of all levels and currently lives in Oregon with his wife, Kristen. Coach Marcus takes us through his myriad of mentors and experiences to develop him as a coach. Jonathan talks about what he learned NOT to do as a coach. He continues on to discuss the importance of creating great experiences for our athletes. Coach talks about stressing the process over accolades. Johnathan talks about how expectation is the killer of joy. We discuss the importance of the human element in coaching over the X’s and O’s. Coach Marcus talks about the vitality of funding needed for coaching and educators. Jonathan educates us on his takes aways he learned from going back to teaching the roots of track & field in high school. He then walks us through some of the training progressions he did with an abbreviated season. Coach explains how Covid has forced us to be better at what we do as coaches. We discuss the reality of the identity crises most coaches will face in their careers. Coach and I chat about reframing poor moments into something positive to better ourselves. For elite performance technology please visit: https://store.simplifaster.com/sku/83/ To purchase the Sprinter's Compendium visit: https://store.vervante.com/c/v/V4081803315.html To follow Coach Marcus on Twitter @jmarpdx