Meet Bob Williams

Running for fitness or competition, on your own or with others, should be fun, challenging, and rewarding. Regardless of whether success means faster times or longer distances, without the joy of the day-to-day process, you may not be able to sustain the energy necessary to maintain the habit of this wonderful activity.

But it’s also important to train with purpose and understanding of how the elements of training work together.

Combining these two aspects of your overall training journey is what Bob Williams has been helping runners do for more than 50 years, using principles learned from his mentor, coaching legend Bill Bowerman, and his continuing studies of exercise physiology research and training theory.

Bob does this via personalized coaching, which involves crafting individualized plans for runners of all ages and abilities. It’s an approach that has a number of advantages.

• It helps you set realistic goals, then create a personalized training plan that fits not only your goals, but your unique needs, experiences, and abilities.

• It offers the chance to ask, and learn, about the methods, physiology, and purpose behind everything you do. The better you understand the reasons why you are doing something, the more confident you become and the better you will be able to do it.

• It helps instill the motivation needed to keep going when otherwise you might not.

• It gives you someone with whom to prepare race plans, whether those might involve running strategy, nutrition, sleep, hydration, or the psychology of handling pre-race nerves.

• It gives you someone to consult with in times of uncertainty.

Bobs’ personal coaching services are designed for runners of all ages, experience, and abilities. Over the years, he has assisted hundreds of runners to goals ranging from setting a national record to qualifying for the Olympic Trials, running high school or college track, scoring personal bests in local fun runs, qualifying for the Boston Marathon, or enjoying age-group success in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Whatever your experience, Bob can help you set realistic goals and develop plans for achieving them.

“Bill taught me many things, but the biggest is that rest and recovery are critical for short- and long-term development. My goal is to get to know you well enough to provide safe, healthy, and challenging training plans that will give adequate rest and recovery and provide a blueprint for long-term success.”—Bob Williams

Bob has many admirers, and major running magazines have either quoted him or published articles co-authored by him. But the greatest single tribute comes from a high school and college teammate who also trained with him under Bill Bowerman.

“Bowerman,” he says, “revolutionized training by applying two simple principles founded in inescapable human physiology. (1) We are all remarkably different individuals. We differ in muscle-cell makeup, metabolic power, and endurance. We differ in shape, sex, and age. (2) We need different combinations of work and recovery to get the optimum improvement from our training. Bowerman’s greatest genius was discerning every runner’s distinct needs. I was always sick or injured my first two years at Oregon. He convinced me to take sensible easy days. It was the lesson of my life.

“Bob Williams was trained by Bill Bowerman. No one has ever been better at understanding and carrying on these basic principles. No one is more gifted at planning schedules, then seeing and reacting to an athlete’s day-by-day needs, given the stress of life. I know enormously talented, wildly ambitious runners who have ignored his counsel and gotten sick or injured just like I did.

“If you want the finest living practitioner of Bowerman’s great truths, hire Bob Williams.”— Kenny Moore, Fourth Place, 1972 Olympic Marathon, author of Bowerman and the Men of Oregon

Bob Williams: A Lifetime of Winning, Coaching, and Service – Click Here