Welcome to the Team. Great to have you on board Kevin. I’m hoping you will enjoy the changes to your training which might seem quite drastic at first.

With the uncertainty surrounding the October Marathon my suggestion is this 12 week plan which will conclude with a long run of around 25km. We’ll then have 12-14 weeks from that point to build that up if you decide to do another marathon this year.

The focus of this plan is to improve that 5k time and your age grading, whilst still maintaining some of the endurance you have built.

Whilst there are normally 4 runs per week, the total volume will be lower, but the quality of the training will be much greater. Each week will consist of 2 sessions and 2 easy runs (often including a long run).

I think given your ratings with endurance 8 and speed 1, I think this is the necessary action to really help improve your running going forward.

There will also be Strides and a strength and conditioning session (more on that later). I’ve put the intervals in on Tuesdays, but you can switch days and if you are ever free in the evening to come over to Hastings and join the group that would be great, but it’s not that important.

Sunday is mainly saved for long run although if running fast at parkrun on a Saturday, I think it’s sensible to reduce the Sunday long run, and given the marathon is not definite, you don’t need to be smashing out 20km long runs every weekend at the moment.

One of the biggest mistakes I think a lot of parkrunners do it go as fast as they can every week and do very little in between to improve their times. Unless they are new to running, the inevitable outcome is a similar parkrun time each Saturday morning, despite a lot of effort.

Hence why I’ve I only put 3 quick parkruns in the plan. There are couple of sessions in there too, and it’s possible we could change this, but the rest would be “easy parkruns”. From my coaching and running experience I really feel this is the best approach.

It then gives you 3-4 weeks of good quality training before having another attempt at a faster time. Sometimes improvement can take 8-12 weeks so if that first parkrun attempt you don’t notice an improvement, stick with it.

In terms of S&C, I think once a week for now is progress and then after this initial plan, if the sessions go well we can add in a 2nd S&C. It’s all very simple, can be done at home and without any weights or equipment.

It also might be worth adding in some daily stretches if you have time. It’s something I do, 10-15 minutes a day, especially as someone who spends so long at my desk, it’s a game changer. If this is of interest I can certainly recommend some stretches to help improve your flexibility.

That’s it really. Any questions just ask. The numbers on the plan are TRAINING LOAD scores. That is how I create my plans and it basically represents the difficultly of a session (Effort Level x Time). It’s a much more efficient way of create a training schedule than purely how many miles you run.