View source for Alberto Salazar's Ten Golden Rules

1. BE CONSISTENT Find a training plan that you can stick to long-term.
If you can run four days a week, every week, you are going to get 90
percent of the benefits of training seven days a week.

2. TAKE RECOVERY DAYS SERIOUSLY The day after a tough workout, the
most you want to do is jog lightly or do some form of cross-training,
like cycling. You need a recovery day after a hard day. No exceptions.

3. INCREASE MILEAGE GRADUALLY Do not increase your weekly mileage by
more than 10 percent every month. No matter how good you feel, be very
gradual. You won't know until it's too late that you're overdoing it.

4. STAY ON THE TRAIL Pavement damages joints, tendons, ligaments, and
muscles. The more you can run on grass, woodchips, or dirt, the better
off you are. My athletes run 90 percent of their workouts on soft
surfaces.

5. RUN FASTER It's hard to race faster than you train. However fast
you want to run a race, you've got to do some shorter intervals—what
we call speed work—at least that fast.

6. STRENGTHEN YOUR WHOLE BODY Good runners condition their whole
bodies. The arms drive the legs. Keep your upper body and core toned
with a lot of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and back raises (don't
forget that the back is part of the core). Stay away from machine
weights and stick to Pilates, climbing, and dynamic flexibility work
like yoga.

7. WEAR THE RIGHT SHOES The second-most-common cause of injuries, next
to running too much on hard surfaces, is foot pronation and shoe
instability. The more you run, the more support your foot needs.

8. PERFECT YOUR FORM Every motion your body makes should propel you
directly forward. If your arms are crossing or you are overstriding,
you're losing force. Your posture should be straight, and your
striding foot should land directly underneath you.

9. TACKLE DOUBT HEAD-ON At some point you're going to push yourself
harder, you're going to enter into a gray area that can be painful,
and you're going to doubt yourself. Push through it. Never think you
are mentally weak.

10. EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY If you don't have enough knowledge behind what
you're doing, you're not going to run well or you're going to injure
yourself. With the Internet, GPS phones, advanced heart-rate monitors,
and even your iPod, you now can be coached individually, even while
you run. I have an antigravity treadmill in my garage. Use the
knowledge and tools that are out there.