Last week the weather was atrocious, yet around 20 runners still turned up at the Edmondscote track for their weekly interval session.
That’s what I love about marathons – you HAVE TO do the training. You have no choice if you want a good result.
This makes decisions about weather conditions really easy – there [...]

Tempo runs are really simple speed workouts. Just warm-up, run at a challenging steady pace, and cool down. They are also called lactate, anaerobic, or fatigue threshold runs.
When you go above your threshold, lactic acid builds up, breathing becomes laboured, form gets ragged, and muscles tense and tighten as fatigue sets in. RESULT: You’re forced to [...]

Having enrolled on John Thornhill’s Masterclass course, one of the first instructions was to write a blog, with regular and frequent posts. I realised quite soon that if I had to write regularly, then it had better be about something I’m interested in.
I wrote a list of categories of subjects I’m interested in: Beer, Comics, [...]

I have run 17 marathons, and the last one was 3 years ago, when I was relieved to announce my ‘retirement’ from ever running 26.2 miles again. I was so pleased that I no would no longer run a marathon I wrote a blog post about it: Sub 3 hour Marathons.
Sean Connery vowed never to play James Bond [...]

Every Thursday I coach a group of runners at the Edmondscote track in Leamington Spa. They have a broad spectrum of abilities, and ambition, so I give a choice of three programmes; ranging through Silver, Gold and Platinum ‘medals’.
Recently I introduced a new ‘Bronze Medal’ session for beginners. Having new runners join our group has bumped [...]

Speed sessions on a running track are always hard. They are hard for 4 minute mile runners, and they are still hard for 10 minute mile runners. The important thing is that each athlete is giving 100% effort; – Track speed will obviously vary between runners.
Because of this I always offer a choice of 4 different track sessions, [...]

Every Wednesday my local running club Spa Striders have a speed session. Something different each week, and on the first Wednesday of each month it’s a track session which I coach. For many of the runners this is their only speed work, and I have to be careful that the programme is not too hard, [...]

Every Thursday I coach a group of 10/12 runners at the track in Leamington Spa. They are training to improve their speed for races from 10k up to a Marathon. It’s hard work. Most road runners wouldn’t dare set foot on a track.
I have been doing this regularly for 5 years now, and I always see [...]

Running marathons is hard work, and training for marathons is worse. I got my fastest marathon time during a mid-life crises, trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t really getting older.
I ran 2 hours 41 minutes in the London 1995 marathon, when I was 40 years old. Unfortunately an inevitable consequence of ageing is that you [...]

Great session on the track last night – I worked really hard and the endorphins are still buzzing around (see ‘I’m a Drug Addict…….‘)  - hence this post.
There is a wide range of running abilities amongst my coaching group, so I always try and give them a choice of workout to suit their individual skills and ambition. The [...]