If you want to run faster, you have to practice running faster. There’s no doubt that running interval sessions on a regular basis is a great way to do this. There are workouts to suit almost every type of runner, and all sorts of race, distance or time goals. But the purpose of this is […]
It’s the time of year when many runners are reviewing their annual goals and setting new ones. However, setting meaningful goals for the year isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some runners know exactly what they want to achieve – maybe to complete a specific distance, run a certain time in a race, or complete […]
Some runners find Christmas and the ensuing changes in routine, means finding time to get out, or sticking to a schedule gets much harder. Here are my top tips to keeping going over the festive season – remember, you can still enjoy your running, but you don’t have stick to your normal schedule if it […]
The word may make non-runners giggle, but the best distance runners in the world do fartlek workouts regularly, and so should you. Here’s why… The word fartlek is Swedish for speedplay, and that’s what it is – literally playing around with speed. It is an unstructured (or semi-structured) continuous run where periods of different speeds […]
Over the last week you may have seen a lot of Facebook posts about the London Marathon as emails have gone out offering “Good for Age” places. So what does this really mean, and why is it a goal for so many British runners? There are three ways to get a place in […]
You can run faster! (Why you should talk to yourself in the third person when running) Self talk is a massive thing in running. Everyone has an internal dialogue when they run, all those random thoughts that go through your head before and during the run or race. Elite athletes focus on exactly what, when […]
Brrrr. It’s suddenly turned cold. This week has been the first week this autumn that I’ve had to layer up, and extra warmth was very welcome! As we hit temperatures near freezing, here’s some advice on making the most of the colder days…. It’s not all bad, you know, this morning was a lovely crisp […]
With the advent of GPS watches that tell us anything and everything, is internally knowing your pace on the run, the art of a pacing by feel, completely lost? Have you ever gone out for a run or a race and agonised over whether you’re going too fast or too slow? Too hard or too […]
A rubber duck is one of your greatest resources. Seriously. Apart from being bathtime entertainment and useful for science experiments (investigation of currents at sea and glacier movements, mostly) they are a firm favourite of software engineers. In this context, rubber ducking is short for “rubber duck debugging” and is a method of debugging code. […]
After a recent discussion on a couple of Facebook groups about London Marathon results not yet appearing on British Athletics’ Power of Ten website (https://www.thepowerof10.info), I thought it was a good time to write an introduction to this database of athletic performances to anyone who hasn’t yet discovered it. Set up by British Athletics prior […]
