Coaching Information

Planning ahead is essential for improvement in an athletes performance. 4-6 months in advance is common. This doesn't means the smallest detail of each session needs to be planned. But different phases and progression of training based upon your goals, needs time to be plotted out to reduce overtraining and factor appropriate recovery.

To help with your planning we have produced an event calendar looking at many of the key events in 2026. 

·       Country To Capital Ultra- 43 miles/ 69.2k Saturday 10^th January 2026

·       Arc Of Attrition- 20k/ 50k/ 100k/ 100 miles

·       Tokyo Marathon 1^st March 2026

·       Boston Marathon 20^th April 2026

·       London Marathon 26^th April 2026

·       Great Birmingham Run- 10k/ half marathon 3^rd May 2026

·       Great Bristol Run- 10k/ half marathon 10^th May 2026

·       Worcester Half and Full Marathon- 26.2 miles/ 13.1 miles/ 10k 17^th May 2026

·       Cape Town Marathon 24^th May 2026

·       Great Manchester Run- 10k/ half marathon 31^st May 2026 

·       Bolton 70.3- half Ironman- 1.9k swim/ 90k bike/ 21.1k run 7^th June 2026

·       West Highland Way Ultra- 96 miles 20^th June 2026

·       Race To The King Ultra- 30k/ 50k/ 80k/ 100k 20^th June 2026

·       Race To The Stones Ultra- 50k/ 100k non stop/ 100k 11^th- 12^th July 2026

·       Swansea 70.3 half Ironman- 1.9k swim/ 90k bike/ 21.1k run 12^th July 2026

·       Leeds full Ironman- 3.8k swim/ 180k bike/ 42.2k run

·       Sydney marathon 30^th August 2026

·       Worcester City Run- 10k/ half marathon 12^th- 13^th September 2026

·       Great North Run- half marathon 13^th September 2026

·       Stratford`s half marathon and big 10k 13^th September 2026

·       Berlin marathon 27^th September 2026

·       Kona full Ironman- 3.8k run/ 180k bike/ 42.2k run10^th October 2026

·       Chicago marathon 11^th October 2026

·       Great South Run- 10 miles TBC

·       Great Scottish Run- 10k/ half marathon TBC

·       New York marathon 1^st November 2026

Plan ahead, if you are not sure what to do, chat to one of our coaching team about helping you achieve you goals.

Choosing footwear for race days

Can one pair of running shoes cope with both training and racing, yes. Can racing and 'faster training days' feel easier and more fun if you use a 'performance shoe', also yes. There is no one fixed answer. It all depends of what you feel the best in. To help with putting your mind in one direction of the other, try listening to this episode from the Dr's of Running podcast. Its great information for you to look at the options available to you.

Tempo Training

You may well come across a variety of descriptions on Tempo running, both what is the pace and how it is best used. We will take the format that our coaching team work with which also happens to be the most common version.

Tempo is a mixed paced running session. The benefit of using a mixed pace during a single session is to both stimulate a heart rate level / zone without over stressing and to adapt to an ‘intensity of moving effort’ repeatedly with the option to recover and therefore encourage better mechanics / technique as fatigue is reduced.

The ‘pace’ of a Tempo run is either your 10k race pace or just slightly quicker than 10k race pace. (But only just quicker!!)

Tempo runs tend to be (but not always) based on a repetition of a time base with a short duration recovery. (ie 5 x 4 minutes with a 90 second recovery in between each run)

4 Minutes of moving quickly but smooth. Not pushing so hard that your breathing is heavy or HR level is very high. The pace needs to be maintained across the whole number of repetitions. No training gain from hitting the first 2 hard and falling apart for the remaining runs.

As training progresses the number of reps can increase, as can the duration of the runs. Time based planning can turn into distance based (ie 5 x 1k with 90 seconds recovery) Likewise as you can start to increase / decrease the amount of recovery time between each run, but just keep the recovery short than the effort time.

So based upon your training / racing goals, your Tempo sessions can vary. For marathon running Tempo can be as long as 20 minutes blocks with 4 minutes recovery. (4 x 20 minutes with 4 minutes recovery). If you are 5k or 10k runner your session may look more like 5 x 1k with 2 minutes recovery. 800 & 1500 meter track runners could use Tempo as a winter training tool to build aerobic ability and will run something like 10-15 x 2 minutes with 60 seconds.

Tempo training is a versatile tool when used in relation to your specific goals. Chat to our coaching team about training programs and coaching services.