Welcome to the Training Room!

It's an important day today - yes it's only 4 days to Christmas and yes it's the last day for First Class Post, but much more importantly than that it's exactly 3 calendar months until you'll be lining up at the Reading Half Marathon.

Between now and then there's the small matter of putting in the training, come rain or shine. Or, for that matter, come sleet or snow.

Keeping your training going when it's cold, dark, wet and miserable outside is a significant challenge but not an insurmountable… Continue

There are still 15 weeks to the RHM, but you should already have a very clear idea in your mind of what your goals are for the run.

Have you started your training plan with the aim of just “getting round” the course? Have you run it before and would like to go a little quicker this time round? Or do you not have a clue about how quick you want to do it in and are just going to “see what happens”?!

If you fall into one of the above groups then you are not alone as I’d estimate that more than tw… Continue

On Friday last week I spent 8 hours on Skype with Nick Anderson from Full Potential, developing a series of 5 marathon training programs for the Spring.

Apart from feeling as though I'd actually run a marathon by the end of it, the session really reinforced many of the principles I have used for many years when it comes to program design.

There are 17 weeks to go to the RHM2010, which means that the 16 week schedules I have uploaded onto the… Continue

I interviewed Nick Anderson (contributing editor for Runner's World and coach to Louise Damen, RHM 2008 winner) from Full Potential this morning for the Reading Half Marathon Training Club on the subject of pacing different training runs.

It was a fascinating conversation and really cleared up a lot of confusion about how fast you should be running fartlek, intervals, threshold, long runs, hill runs and recov… Continue

Quite a few emails came in a while ago from runners asking how they can lose weight whilst training for the Reading Half Marathon. This is an interesting question because weight loss itself is a goal so you have to decide how you're going to approach it.

Many of the weight loss clients I have trained in the past have seen fantastic results by focusing on training for a race, rather than simply trying to lose weight. Most weight loss regimes cut calories dramatically which has a significant impa… Continue