Building confidence along with fitness When I write a training plan for a runner, it will be made up of many of the familiar elements you'll have seen on your own: easy runs, long runs, tempo runs and intervals. Sessions organised neatly over the weeks, building towards a race, all with their own goals helping [...]
Telling people what they don't want to hear Part of being a good coach, in my view, involves telling people no. I write personalised training plans for runners, I provide week-by-week coaching, and I've coached runners in person. And sometimes I'm asked to make things happen that I just don't think are possible. A few [...]
So you want to run a marathon... I've helped a lot of runners tackle their first marathon over the years, and I know that it can be an exciting but also a confusing journey. You'll have a lot of people telling what you should and shouldn't do - from quitting running altogether because it's bad [...]
My gym has sporadic phone signal, so in between exercises, I spend a lot of time watching what people around me are doing. And I see a lot of people making the same mistakes. I don't mean mistakes like not putting their equipment away or wiping it down at the end of a session, though this [...]
As a final instalment to this week's blogs on exercise and pregnancy, I asked my mum what it was like 40 years ago when she had her first child. There were no mother and baby yoga classes and no running buggies. How did they survive? Back in 1971, when I had my first child, Maternity Units where [...]
This week I’m publishing a series of posts on women’s experience of exercise during and after pregnancy. There have been a series of high profile sportswomen continuing to train and compete in recent months. But what about regular active women? This week I’ll interview a runner, swimmer, triathlete and yoga teacher. Erin Taylor, Founder and [...]
This week I’m publishing a series of posts on women’s experience of exercise during and after pregnancy. There have been a series of high profile sportswomen continuing to train and compete in recent months. But what about regular active women? This week I’ll interview a runner, swimmer, triathlete and yoga teacher. Manda Read, swimmer, 11 [...]
This week I’m publishing a series of posts on women’s experience of exercise during and after pregnancy. There have been a series of high profile sportswomen continuing to train and compete in recent months. But what about regular active women? This week I’ll interview a runner, swimmer, triathlete and yoga teacher. Josephine Perry, triathlete, 7 [...]
This week I'm publishing a series of posts on women's experience of exercise during and after pregnancy. There have been a series of high profile sportswomen continuing to train and compete in recent months. But what about regular active women? This week I'll interview a runner, swimmer, triathlete and yoga teacher. Laura Stewart, runner, 23 [...]
No runner likes being injured and not being able to run. I remember sitting in a restaurant with a friend chatting once and getting annoyed at the runners I saw running past the window, because, at the time, I was injured and couldn't run. Since pulling out of the Great Eastern Run last year with [...]
