Welcome to the Team Michelle. Very excited to work with you and I feel like you have a lot of potential to improve and I feel like you have just the right character as well to follow a plan. That determination to get things done, it’s a brilliant quality to have.

I also think it’s very important from the offset you are aware of how good a runner you are for your age/gender. Please keep telling yourself that, because it is true.

So the main goal is that sub 2 at Hastings Half Marathon in October. I believe if the plan goes smoothly then you could achieve that goal and find the race comfortable throughout. That would be the ideal scenario.

I think along the way you should also see a big improvement in your parkrun times, with all the additional speed work you will be doing.

That is a key change to your plan. The introduction of a speed session once a week. It might be a shock to the system at first and you might question what you have let yourself in for, but trust me, they are worth it. In time hopefully you’ll learn to enjoy running at a higher effort level and pushing your boundaries.

Plus training with others when doing the harder sessions can be great fun as everyone else is working hard and very supportive.

At the moment, don’t worry about the days sessions are set. I’ve put a lot of Tuesday sessions in there at the moment, but especially at first when your rota is still varied, we can always change that from one week to the next.

If looking at the plan and a bit unsure about the numbers, it’s called Training Load. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO. It’s a much better way of tracking you progress than simply using miles.

To be honest you don’t need to worry too much about the spreadsheet, that’s more for my use. If you login and use your dashboard that’s where you will see the sessions for the following week.

I’ll also look to include S&C sessions which long term are very important. Whilst somewhat runner focused they will cover all aspects including core strength and some upper body exercises.

Where you are weaker on one side, it might be worth adjusting the weights accordingly. So if you did a chest press with 5kg dumbbells you might want to use a 3kg or 4kg dumbbell on your weaker side at first.

One thing I always say to new members on the team is improvement can take time, anywhere between 8-12 weeks before you start seeing those gains, sometimes it’s quicker, but stay patient, trust the process and your times will improve.

If you have any questions just ask, no matter how silly they may seem.