Blog

As a running coach, last Sunday’s marathon was a big deal for me. I was coaching 3 athletes directly who were running, several in my training group from my voluntary coaching role and a large number of running friends I have accumulated over a number of years in the sport were running too.
As is often the case, the athletes I coach all finished, and finished well with slightly mixed results. One achieved a PB (Personal Best) and a goal of a women’s championship time (sub 3.14) which had been on her wish list for a while. Another achieved a big PB but fell just short of his sub 4 hour target. And a third was short of a PB by several minutes despite running an excellent men’s championship time of 2.43. We knew this was a possible outcome as his build up had been far from perfect.
It got me thinking...

And suddenly everything’s right’, as goes the excellent song by Paolo Nutini. But that doesn’t quite seem to be the case in distance running at the moment. The debate about the new style of carbon shoes which is raging at the moment is likely to continue for some time. This is all well and good but we have, somewhere along the line, got to remember about the person in all of this, the athlete. Last week...

When I was very young and went to Sunday school we used to sing a song with the name of the title above and we used to enjoy adding 'burning, burning, burning' to the end of the line when it was not required

‘Today, I have to run.  Mmm, no I don’t.  After all it’s raining, it’s cold, oh and it will be dark soon. But I can do it tomorrow.’  Sound familiar?

Now we are firmly established in the third lockdown, (Did the second one really count?), and we are only allowed to go out and exercise once a day. This is a great time to get started, or to get some great training in...