The City2surf is only a week away.
If you have been able to stick to the training plan, you are now about as ready as you are going to be, so this last week is a relaxing one.
That doesn’t mean you do nothing, it just means you do a light workout every second day. If you are to perform at your best next Sunday, you don’t want to stress your body too much this week, but rather give yourself time to fully recharge.
I recommend short runs on Tuesday and Thursday, and then give yourself a full two days rest before your 14km on Sunday morning.
Have a great week.
About the Author
Chris Edwards is a Communication Strategist and Executive Coach. He is a City2Surf Legend who applies the same focus and dedication to his clients that has powered him over the line year after year.
Discover if Chris is the best coach to help you improve your business or personal performance; contact him now for a confidential chat.
If you intend to run the City2Surf, then with seven weeks to go, you’d be getting into the serious part of the training where we start to look at improving your running technique. See ‘Lifting your Game -- Week 7’.
If you are getting sore ankles, feet, knees or even hips, the chances are that you have either poorly fitting or worn out shoes or you are moving with an ungainly action – or possibly both!
Pain is a good indicator that something is not right, so don’t carry on and hope it will go away, because it probably won’t. If you have physical pain, you should see a physiotherapist as soon as possible for corrective advice.
In my experience, most of these types of pain can be alleviated or eliminated after taking a careful look at how your feet come in contact with the ground. One of the things I do is jog on different surfaces such as on the grass or the beach. The beach is fantastic because the sand absorbs most of the impact of each step.
With 7 weeks to go, it is time to introduce some interval work. For those of you who plan to walk the City2Surf, your goal should be to walk as fast as you can or to jog for a minute, then continue at a relaxed pace, then repeat this 3 or 4 times with each walking session.
The most important thing at this stage is to stick to your commitment to get outside and keep up the training. Staying focused on your goal is one of the hardest things to achieve on your own.
Weeks to go until the City2Surf
Ten > Nine > Eight > Seven > Six > Five > Four > Three > Two > One > Go
About the Author
Chris Edwards is a Communication Strategist and Executive Coach. He is a City2Surf Legend who applies the same focus and dedication to his clients that has powered him over the line year after year.
Discover if Chris is the best coach to help you improve your business or personal performance; contact him now for a confidential chat.
Tags: city2surf training
With seven weeks to go, you should be feeling a starting to feel a sense of achievement and hopefully you’ll also be getting comfortable with a the idea of monitoring the how far you walk.
So, in stage two, we need maintain the routine but it is time to get a little further out of our comfort zone again:
In the next three weeks we will focus on increasing our speed and conditioning by introducing some interval and hill work into the program.
This stage of this program is very important because if we continue to walk and jog as we have been doing over the initial stage of the training program, our bodies will get used to a fairly sedate aerobic routine.
Ideally we want to push ourselves a little bit harder by varying our speed throughout this second stage of the program, we will work both the aerobic and anaerobic systems.
By introducing anaerobic work, such as fast walking or jogging, we can develop more speed and better prepare ourselves for variable conditions that we will find on the day of the big run.
Weeks to go until the City2Surf
Ten > Nine > Eight > Seven > Six > Five > Four > Three > Two > One > Go
About the Author
Chris Edwards is a Communication Strategist and Executive Coach. He is a City2Surf Legend who applies the same focus and dedication to his clients that has powered him over the line year after year.
Discover if Chris is the best coach to help you improve your business or personal performance; contact him now for a confidential chat.
After a few weeks of regular walking you should be feeling a little fitter and you should be starting to get used to the routine of wearing the pedometer and aiming for your target daily step count.
I recommend that you do longer walks on at least 4 days each week and on one of these days, you add in some hills if you aren’t already walking hills. On your rest days, as usual, don’t let your daily step count drop below 12,000. (Remember that you still want to burn those kilojoules.)
I always do a long training session on either the Saturday or Sunday. By long, I suggest you do a minimum of 16,000 to 18,000 steps. Aim higher if you can. Damien, who appears on the video on this page, has been averaging over 16,000 steps every day since we started this program and has lost a few more kilograms since the video was shot.
And, rather than simply accumulating your 12,000 steps over the course of the day, schedule some longer walks of 7,000 to 10,000 steps into your day on at least four days of the week.
If you feel like jogging occasionally, you can introduce some jogging on your four training days. Depending on your level of fitness, it is a good idea to use a use a heart rate monitor so that you don’t over do it. Remember that you want to train using no more than 75 to 80% of your capacity. (See ‘Calculating your Ideal Training Level’)
If you are feeling pretty good and you want to push yourself more, have a look at week 8 of the Lifting your Game training program.
Weeks to go until the City2Surf
Ten > Nine > Eight > Seven > Six > Five > Four > Three > Two > One > Go
About the Author
Chris Edwards is a Communication Strategist and Executive Coach. He is a City2Surf Legend who applies the same focus and dedication to his clients that has powered him over the line year after year.
Discover if Chris is the best coach to help you improve your business or personal performance; contact him now for a confidential chat.
Tags: city2surf training
Hats off to everyone who have managed to keep their step count over 10,000 a day in the conditions of the last two weeks.
With Sue and Sonia and our pedometers in the rain at 11pm
Most of the people I know of who are following the New Beginning City2Surf training program are averaging 13,000 to 14,000 steps a day, which is excellent considering many of you have been regularly walking in the rain.
Sonia and Sue are both joining us in the Life7 City2Surf team this year. I was about to leave their house late one night last week when the discussion moved to their daily step count. Without batting an eyelid they decided to get a few more steps in before day’s end.
We headed off for a walk in the dark and the drizzle. I rather enjoyed the rather damp tour by foot of Wentworth Falls Lake, with its eerie lights reflecting through the mist across the water.
After two weeks of regularly walking a minimum of 10,000 steps a day, almost everyone has already lost a kilogram or more. Some, who have been studiously watching their food intake, have lost over 2kg.
This is a great start, but the real challenge will be to maintain this new lifestyle routine until it becomes a habit – and over the winter is the most challenging period you could choose to do it.
About the Author
Chris Edwards is a Communication Strategist and Executive Coach. He is a City2Surf Legend who applies the same focus and dedication to his clients that has powered him over the line year after year.
Discover if Chris is the best coach to help you improve your business or personal performance; contact him now for a confidential chat.
Tags: city2surf training