Finding intensity
Recently I posted about happiness (or lack thereof) and I have to say I was pretty overwhelmed by the response I got to that – friends contacted me by the dozen to offer advice and ask if they could help (to those who asked if they could help,…
Unbalanced: how I need to fit sport back in to my life
I raced a 5km leg of a triathlon relay today and found myself thinking about a question that someone had tweeted me, all about how to attack a race of that distance. My advice a few days ago had been to go out hard and concentrate on catching…
A rant about the value of training advice
With a sport growing in popularity as fast as running is, there will always be people helpfully offering advice and inspiration. Some are completely altruistically motivated, whilst others aim to use their experience or wisdom to make some money. And every so often – and I am afraid…
Do as he says, not as I do
Last night I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by my coach Nick Anderson, to a group of runners from my club, the Mornington Chasers. The subject of the talk was rather wide-ranging and essentially boiled down to… Ways to be the best runner you can…
To train or not to train… that is the question?
For many runners, once they are bitten by the running bug, there are suddenly a whole host of complex reasons why they run, in some cases twice a day and in many cases every day of the week. The forces that drive people to miss out on social…
The storm is coming
Think back if you will, to the point before your marathon preparation cycle started. Let’s take November last year for example. Whether or not you raced last autumn, it is highly likely that last November you were not training for anything specific. Wasn’t that a lovely time? Blissful…
The heart of the matter
I recently was included in a tweet from a friend looking for advice (by the way, if you’re reading this and we’re not yet connected on twitter please do look me up: @simon_freeman) Any running friends use a heart monitor (polar?)? if not how do u tell wen…
The power of the pen (or the keyboard)
I have discovered something about myself and I suspect I am not alone – I need to write things down to really get my head around them. If I don’t I tend to imagine things are better (or occasionally worse) than they really are and that is not…
Getting rubbed up the right way.
I love a massage, there is no getting away from it. In fact before I started running I used to love a massage. But now that I train and run regularly, I find that a massage has gone from almost a pleasure that I afford myself to a…
Some things that a runners should never do (and how to avoid doing them)
This is a post inspired by my own stupidity. I run quite a lot and it is all too easy for me to forget to do things that help to keep me up-and-running: things that I know I should do, but don’t. So today, when I got back…