Breaking the glass ceiling on my morning run
We all need a push every now and again if we are going to achieve our best. As a personal coach, it is my job to push my clients into achieving the best they can in many aspects of their lives, and like them, I too need a good push every now an again. I’ve been a long time advocate of early morning exercise as a great way to kick-start your day. In my recent article, Breaking your own glass ceiling I mentioned pushing myself on my morning run last week and achieving my fastest 5km run in over 18 months. This led me to wonder at why I was...
read moreBreaking your glass ceiling at the gym
One of the things I often advise clients to do is find a buddy who shares a similar goal, and work toward them together. If you have a fitness goal, this can be an easy thing to do. The world is full of people who want to get fit, but for one reason or another, can’t stick to a regular fitness routine. Regularly going to the gym is one of those activities I’ve struggled with over the years until, about five or six years ago, when I teamed up with a friend and together we’ve kept each other on track by setting gym appointments...
read moreBreaking your own glass ceiling
It is so easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing our best, but are we really? It is just too easy to be mediocre. In fact, the world seems to conspire to make us fit somewhere in the middle… to be average. I’ve fallen into this trap many times myself, and what it means is that we create our own glass ceiling in each aspect of our lives. A week ago, I decided to really push myself at the gym. Working with my personal trainer, I managed to lift much heavier weights in almost every exercise I’ve tried. Spotting...
read moreFocus and Endurance
Only two weeks to go, this is our last serious training week. Unfortunately, I’m still battling my injured foot so I’ll be taking it fairly easy again this week. But, at this stage of preparation, you should be feeling at your peak. The idea it to use this last serious training week to focus on your endurance and speed with some short runs with effort and then one final long run at the end of the week. Try lengthening your stride. By adding only a few centimetres per stride, you can take minutes from your 14km time. Good...
read moreRunning up hills in training
When you are in training, don’t get disheartened if you have difficulty running up hills. I find that it doesn’t matter if you walk and jog up the hills; the most important thing is to do the distance. And when training, try to run up at least 50% of the hills ‘with effort’, but you can walk the rest. I find that it makes a big difference to my performance if I train with hills as opposed to training without them, but it doesn’t necessarily make a big difference whether I run all the way up or walk and jog up the...
read morePreventing Running Injuries
I’m not a sports physio and I don’t like running injuries so I try my best to avoid them. Having said that, I have had a fair few, so if you have an injury, I can empathise with you. Running injuries usually come in the form of pains in the joints, pulled muscles, twisted ankles, stress fractures (such as shin splints), and tendinitis. And when you start to do longer distances, you may also get blisters and chaffing, (and chaffed nipples, which can be rather painful!). One of the important things I’ve learnt over the years...
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