So glad to have you back. Sorry for all the shit you’ve had to go through but let’s start from here. Feedback will be crucial and being honest and listening to the body, letting me know how you feel should help us adapt the plan going forward. The priority has to be enjoyment and staying fit. If you combine those the improvement is inevitable.

So the plan? 3 weeks of relatively easy running concluding with a possible slightly quicker attempt at Woodchurch if you decide to enter. Then there’s the option to add a 4th run. We can discuss that nearer the time on how you’re feeling and starting to do some interval work, 10k at first, but slowly introducing quicker sessions as the plan evolves.

I’ve added a few other races towards the end of the plan, including the Beckley 10k and Seafront 10K. Totally up you though if you want to do these. I’m also hopeful come the end of this plan you’ll be comfortable running 10 miles. That will set you up well to then potentially kick on over the winter months and get yourself in good shape for a spring half.

I’ve included parkrun most weeks as I know that’s important to you and by week 12 we’ll start looking to improve the times there. The majority of Sundays are also in the plan but we can monitor progress as the weeks pass and if you get fit quickly we can always incorporate some 2 hour runs.

There will also be some long run sessions where you just push the pace a little as these have proved popular. I love them myself. Much more interesting than just running the same pace for 2 hours. Thursday is a regular easy run so you can join the ASPT gang.

A few things have changed since you were last on the team. There is a pace and target times which I add to the top of the dashboard but I’ll wait until weeks 3 or 4 when we know what your times should be.

At the foot of the dashboard is stretches and a warm up routine. The stretches should be daily if you can. The Warm Up will make a big difference and is bespoke to you to ensure when you start these runs you are properly loosen up.

I’ve learned that training plans change a lot, and the spreadsheet is more for my reference, so I’ll be adapting that as the plan progresses.