Welcome onboard. I think it’s been a while since I’ve been this excited about a new member to the team. Partly because of your potential to improve but also I get the feeling your feedback is going to really be an enjoyable read.

I had a look back through your training prior to the physio telling you to ease off and it just made me realise how good you are going to be with some consistency. Probably too good for my liking as I’ll be trying to keep up with you soon.

But hopefully that excites you. Consistency is the key. You know that with your gym work. So if you look at the plan in any depth there are a lot of numbers. These numbers are Training Load. What is training load? It’s your RPE (effort) x Time or Distance.

It’s a much better way of creating a consistent & progressive plan than just using miles. What it has also allowed me to do is edit the plans far more efficiently.

So if I said to you go out and run 60 mins easy, and you went and run 90 mins at half marathon pace, your training load for that session goes from 180 – 700. So I need to react and change the subsequent runs. That’s where the feedback is so important.

If the training load is consistent from one week to the next, you’re going to make gains. It’s interesting that the plan only has 3.29 runs per week, which is low. But the average load of 1168 per week is much higher than your previous training which was coming in around 800 (and that was only that high due to the Spartan race).

Hopefully you’ll feel this is manageable, challenging at times and also enjoyable. If it’s not, let me know and I can change things around. Plans rarely stay the same. Quite a few I’ve ripped up midway through due to runner changing their mind on their goal, or getting injured, or just progressing at a different rate to what we expected.

With that in mind don’t pay too much attention to what’s happening beyond the first few weeks as it will likely change.

In terms of the easy runs. It’s ok to do them with Kelly if that’s the plan, but ideally you want to be hitting the paces on your dashboard. I run with Jax, but just loop back for her. Seems a bit harsh, but she’s happy (I think).

Any questions just ask.

It’s exciting for me when I take on a runner who has so much potential to improve. You definitely fall into that category.

At the moment I’ve left S&C in your capable hands but always happy to discuss.