I sometimes feel I should be more modest but hopefully it installs you, the runner, with more confidence in me the coach, when I say I love this plan. I think it’s fab.

I love the fact we have that divide. Throughout we focus on speed, and those weekly sessions get progressively more challenging. I’ve tweaked the gym session to include upper body stuff. You might find it’s quite a long session, but it covers all basis. I’ve seen some of my runners make significant gains in strength doing 2 S&C per week. Anymore is an overkill.

We have the easy runs combined with strides. That itself is a drill which will really help you work on the knee lift and stride length. If ever there is a time to make improvements in that area strides is it.

We have our tempo based session, which to begin with will be 10 focused until the EMPG in June, then we switch to half marathon pace for the big half in September. What I pride myself on is offering variety in terms of the sessions. You almost never repeat a session. In fact the only one you do twice is the 30 mins half marathon tempo later in the plan to really dial in your goal pace.

Hopefully this variety makes the training more enjoyable and engaging. I can’t wait to get back to doing more of these sessions myself and almost frustrated I’m racing Sunday as it means only easy runs in the build up.

We compliment all that with the long run, which starts off a bit muted at first but increases again as the plan progresses. Yes we may lose a little bit of endurance post London but that’s the easiest thing to regain in my opinion.

I think the first plan we pushed a bit too hard early doors and partly that was my fault but often it can take a while to get to know the runner. I think that overload led to a bit of inconsistency later in the 10 weeks and perhaps the niggle, but hopefully now at around 135 average we’ll have you working at your sweet spot (you average 129 in the build up to London but peaked early at 155, which I now feel was too high). In my defence that week you did hit 110% of the target.

Too many numbers 😂🤦‍♂️

The point being I’m optimistic this is right weekly level for you and is balanced well with all the perfect ingredients that a sensible, progressive running plan should have.

Maybe we have scope to include another race (or even two) in the build up to the Big Half, so if anything else takes your fancy just let me know.

But I’m excited to have this bigger window to work with you as I love your enthusiasm and your goals going forward.

Let’s do this.