Welcome to the Team Mike. Firstly well done for some excellent times already. I think that highlights your potential to improve, especially with some consistent training.

“Consistent” being the key word. That’s where true success is built with running. You don’t really have to do anything special. Just keep showing up, keep ticking off the sessions.

We work hard in the track and interval sessions, but the other runs we want to keep the pace sensible, the heart rate down and a low RPE (rate of perceived exertion).

What worries me a little is looking at your Strava not a great deal has been happening of late so I don’t want to throw you in the deep end and for you to get injured straight away.

We do need to build, it can take time, but once you have safely laid those foundations then the magic really starts to happen. That’s not to say you won’t improve in the first few months, you should, as you’ll be doing more than previously, but we want to slowly get you to the level, someone of your ability should be training at.

It’s all about the training points working with me. Each session is worth a set number of points depending on it’s difficulty. Weekly totals should be consistent (there’s that word again) and progressive to ensure we train smart and get fitter.

For someone at your level and eventually sub 23 5k we would ideally like to be working at over 100pts per week, maybe even 120 eventually. But to go from 30 to 120 in one leap would be a disaster.

So we spend a bit of time building towards that, and once we get there, the times should really start to improve. So to begin with we keep things light. 3 runs per week, 1 speed session, 1 easy run, 1 long run.

Each of these will get progressively more challenging (more pts) as the plan evolves. That said if you did want to come to Monday track or my Tuesday evening sessions we can incorporate them, I’m just wary, as mentioned in the message, those sessions are really tough right now, so we would need to be a little cautious.

I’ve included a stretching routine to try and do as often as possible. I do something similar daily as I’ve always had back problems. Given your flexibility was the lowest score it would be a good idea to try and include these.

We’ve also got the S&C which again we start off very basic but if it’s too easy I can prescribe something much more challenging.

Any questions just ask. But I’m happy with this plan and I think if we can get to that right level, then you can kick on beyond that and have a really strong summer of running.