Welcome to my Team. Super proud of what I have created and how committed and determined my runners are. Results have been excellent and now into my 3rd year of coaching I feel like my knowledge continues to improve. Even more important than that is communicating with my runners and why I offer daily feedback. It’s my favourite part of the job and I feel like it allows me to create good relationships with my runners, most of whom I now call my friends.

I’ve created a plan which takes you right up to York Marathon, 28 weeks, but it has two distinct periods, first we focus on the half marathon and 10k races and only once they have been completed we introduce the marathon specific training.

Variety is what I really focus on and if you keep doing the same thing week in week out, it’s hard to make progress. One of the key parts of running is the understanding that sometimes slowing down actually makes us fitter.

I wrote and article here a few years back (https://pbrunner.co.uk/tips/keep-your-easy-runs-easy/) and will be posting a similar one shortly after some lactate testing results from one of my clients last week further emphasized the fact.

We actually get more benefits from running slower than going too quick. It sounds silly when you first say it, but it’s true. I think that’s something we need to incorporate into your training, when you have an easy run (Low RPE), drop the pace. This will help in many ways, as listed in the article. By running faster and working harder your are actually getting less benefits.

We save the quicker runs for the sessions, where we target specific paces. If you run 3 times per week, all 3 of those runs should be done at different speeds. That way we are testing the body in different ways. We have two main energy systems, aerobic, and anaerobic, the pace you’ve been doing your runs at haven’t really benefitted either to the full capacity and it’s often referred to the “Grey zone”.

We also have fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibres, and that’s why we need to introduce some speed work, so those fast twitch guys are ready when called into action, late in the marathon.

My enjoyment of running changed so much when I started following training plans. In fact, just looking at my last two training runs I did, one I was hitting 5:45 per mile, the other 10:00 per mile. It’s almost like a different sport altogether. And working the body differently is what makes us better runners.

I really hope you enjoy the variety this plan provides you, like I have, and so many of the runners I coach have. Ultimately I believe the end result will be that elusive sub 4 hour marathon. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you smash that barrier in October.

Any questions just ask. Let’s do this.