If you watched my 12 Training Tips of Christmas, you might remember that number 1 was ‘Have a Purpose’ – in other words knowing what the aim of the run is and sticking to it. Well, I went out on Sunday morning for what was planned as an easy aerobic 10 miles. I started off very steadily as I was …

Before COVID struck, we had an abundance of races to choose from. Consequently, it was very easy to fall into the habit of jumping from one race to another without any sort of structure. It could also be tempting to think that to improve our time over a certain distance (perhaps most often the marathon) we need to just keep …

By order of the chairman, I have put together a little compilation of my 12 training tips of Christmas for your delectation! Each tip was deliberately concise to give you an easy aspect on which to focus in order to make improvements in your running. I hope at least one of them will be useful to you! Here’s a link: …

You will have heard us use the term V02 max with reference to training and probably seen it in other contexts too. But what is it all about and why do we make such a fuss about it? What is it? VO2 Max is your maximal oxygen uptake, or to put it another way the greatest amount of oxygen that …

Weekly reminders about hi-viz and cross-country?! Summer is most definitely over! As runners, this period can easily be overlooked. Too soon to start training properly for a spring marathon? Too tired from an autumn marathon? Too muddy from cross-country? Too cold and wet to feel enthusiastic about training? Soon, it’s the week before Ricky Road run and we’re wondering how …

Callum Hawkins had a brilliant run in the World Championship Marathon last night. If you didn’t stay up to watch it, it’s worth a catch up. He very nearly bagged a medal against a high-quality field of runners (mostly East African) who had PBs 5 minutes quicker than his. Having been at one point over 20 seconds off the lead …

So why should you do a recovery run and when you do, how? Intuition might suggest that the why is to ‘fix’ your legs after a hard run. But science now seems to debunk this as there is apparently no evidence that light exercise promotes any physiological response that is relevant to muscle repair. According to sports scientists the real …

Wearable tech and the data it produces is constantly evolving and giving us all sorts of new data to help training and racing. A relatively new innovation is measuring running power. The big names like Garmin and Polar are now offering this option (with the right kit) as well as smaller companies like Stryd and there’s been lots of chat …