Welcome back. 4 of you are now running Beachy Head Marathon, so possible opportunities to train together on those long runs.

I think the first thing to get right is understanding just how different Beachy Head is to London. You’re going to be walking a lot, so why not have that approach in training.

The best way to build our endurance is to do lots of exercise in Zone 2. I’ve added some data to your dashboard which we didn’t have before. If in Zone 2 you can pretty much go all day long, if well fuelled, the minute we start increasing our work load, things get tricky.

So on the long runs, head out on the trails if you like, walk the hills, you might find your heart rate is just as high walking slowly up a hill as it is running on the seafront and our heart has no idea if we are running or walking.

The more training we can do in that zone 2, the better. And I think this training block is a really good opportunity for you, not only to prepare for Beachy Head, add some speed, but also build your aerobic base for future training. The more time on feet you can get, the better.

I use heart rate now to monitor my easy runs. It’s a much better way of doing it. Just the other day I walked up a hill, quite early in my long run and come the end of 16 miles I actually still felt fairly fresh. I walked the hill because I had drifted in Zone 3 and wanted to conserve my energy.

Suddenly walking is a strategy rather than a failure. Given on race day you’ll be walking pretty much from the start, it’s a good habit to get into, but only if the HR has gone too high, don’t walk for the sake of it.

All that said if you find you cannot keep your heart rate in Zone 2 to begin with, I wouldn’t encourage too much walking, you’ll find as your fitness improves that heart rate will start to drop on the easy runs.

I’ve tried to be selective with which efforts sessions I have given you based on your feedback. To avoid the really tough ones, so we have a nice balance there.

In terms of posture it’s just a case of keep working on it as best as you can. Trying to make small improvements, it will always be something you can look to improve.

I’ve added the Pier to Pier but left out Bewl 15 for now. It falls on a recovery week. We can add it in and switch things around if you wanted to run, but I don’t feel you need to do both.

Two other runs I think are perfect prep for Beachy Head are The Amble (not 100% sure on the date yet) and the Rye Ancient Trails 30k. So I’ve included them too.

I’ve put Saturday as the long run most weeks. Several of the team do long runs on Saturdays so you could team up with them. Any questions though just ask.

Let’s do this.