I think the biggest difference between my plans now and when we first worked together is now I understand the importance of everything else that compliments the running.

If you just look at the running in isolation to everything else, it looks really easy. 2.8 runs per week.

But suddenly when you factor in Pilates, S&C, and the swimming, we are hitting 6.6 sessions per week. And that’s without the walking football (I have left that out). So all of a sudden you are training really hard.

It’s why my new “training pts” approach works really well. Because everything contributes to the training. So you might have a week where you only run 15 miles, but in fact you earn over 100 training points, more than someone running twice your amount, but not do anything but run.

And it’s those extra which should help prevent injury. My recent issue is the best thing that ever happened to me as a runner and a coach as it’s opened my eyes to just how damaging running can be on our bodies, compared to the other forms of exercise. Also highlighting the importance of strength work as we get older.

So I’ve created a 10 week plan up until HHM. I’ve left efforts off for the first two weeks and the main reason for that is the Canterbury 10 miler. Given you have only just come back from the injury, but able to cover that distance we don’t want to risk getting injured in the next 10 days or so, and interval training is where more niggles crop up.

Once you’ve smashed the 10 miler (I’ve heard there’s a new route this year?), we can then reintroduce efforts. The Sunday long run will gradually get longer and we can slowly add more weights or potentially more exercises to the S&C.

So that’s how we make progress and in turn your fitness should improve. All being well, you’ll run a strong race at HHM and then we can reassess and perhaps look to set some specific targets. This would then allow us to tweak the training once more and introduce more variety in the way of tempo runs.

But for now I think a cautious approach is wise, after all you are doing an awful lot when you factor in all forms of exercise, but combined I think they create a well structured training plan, and I really hope I can help you improve your times again.

Speaking of which, age grading is a brilliant statistic to use. It gives you a much better idea of our abilities as runners, rather than comparing our times against those younger and faster than us. I mention this now because I think when factoring in age grading you still have the potential to be up with the best runners in our club.

According to one age grading calculator if you were to achieve a sub 2 half later in the year you would score an age grading of 80%. At the last parkrun, the highest age grading score out of 300+ runners was 77.56%.

I say this not to push you hard, or compare with others, but just to highlight to you, how good you are.