Robert Ferris - B-Fit Coaching

Start training.
Now that we are into February and spring is just around the corner, it’s time to put a little zip back into your training. During the winter we can get stuck in tick-over mode, now is the time to start to focus on your early season races.

Be consistent in your training.
Being consistent in your training is not just about completing x number of sessions per week, you also need to be consistent with the various aspects of your training - speed, endurance, technique, hills etc.
Now it’s not very good planning to fit everything into one week, so plan your training over a 14 or 21 day period. This should provide you with sufficient variation to keep sessions interesting and you will also start to see some improvement in form. Don’t forget, rest is a vital ingredient to any training programme.

Train with purpose.
Before any training session ask yourself this question.
What is the purpose of this training session? What are you trying to achieve? Is it speed, technique or just a recovery session, whatever the answer, understand the purpose of a particular session. Plan your sessions in advance, know what you want to achieve and stick to it, the only exception being during illness or injury.

Train hard but within yourself.
To get the best out of yourself you will have to train hard but train too hard and you will get ill or injured. Plan your training so a hard session is followed by a recovery session (train with purpose). Also, being consistent with the various aspects of your training allows the body time to adapt to the stress and strains of training. Try and finish a hard training session feeling you could just about do one more effort if asked, but you would rather not, thank you.

Set your goals/targets high but achievable.
If your present 10k time is 45 minutes setting a goal of running 30 minutes by the end of the year is very unlikely. However setting a target of 40 minutes though still a tough call is more achievable, goals/targets need to be realistic.
If you make a goal too hard, i.e. 30minute 10k, (you have to be a very good runner to run 30minutes for 10k), you will become despondent thinking you have not achieved your goal. Make them too easy and you feel you have not really achieved as much as you could.
Don’t be afraid of setting yourself realistic goals/targets, write them down, tell people what they are, you can’t fail, if you give it your best shot you have not failed, it’s only people who dream of doing something but never try who fail. Some goals are achieved early some later than planned some we won’t achieve, but you only fail if you don’t try.

Don’t beat yourself up over bad results.
Everyone has a bad race. Sometimes you can work out why, other times you won’t have a clue what went wrong. Try to address what went wrong if you know the reasons, if you don’t, swear, throw a tantrum or whatever relieves your disappointment, then forget it, it’s over. There is nothing you can do or say that will change it. Don’t let the frustration from one bad race affect the next.