10 minutes. That is not a long time. Considerably shorter than the time you are likely to be racing or running intervals in the forthcoming session.

Ideally we’d always do a much more advanced warm up with dynamic stretching, running drills and strides, but time doesn’t always allow that. So today’s focus is on the best warm up for running fast and that’s running easy.

Find the time. Never jump into a session or race without doing 10 minutes easy first.

Why do we have to run for 10 minutes beforehand? Well it increases the blood flow in the body, raises that heart rate slightly and gets the muscles, tendons and joints loosened up ready for the race or session.

Mr McIntosh, with his late arrivals and incredible race success might argue it’s not that important, but he’s an exception, so instead, plan ahead and do your warm up run.

When it comes to my team of runners I constantly remind them of the importance of this. 3 mins is no good, 5 minutes isn’t much better and well as for 9 minutes and 55 seconds, why not just keep running for another few spaces? I’m sure they do it to wind me up.

So if you’ve been guilty of starting sessions and races without doing at least a 10 minute warm up jog first, the introduce it to your running routine, you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.