My City to Surf training program is for people like me, someone who does a little bit of exercise each week throughout the year and wants to focus on some running training in the lead up to the Sydney City2Surf.
2012 will be my 42nd go at it, so I’ve had a few tries at sticking to a training plan in years gone bye!
Once you have decided to enter the City2Surf, you need to consider some training and preparation. Believe me, if you do the preparation, you will have a fantastic run to Bondi and feel pretty good (relatively speaking) when you finish.
Sticking to a training program is very difficult for most of us, particularly during the cold months of June and July (where I live it is frequently -4C to -2C when I jog in the mornings).
The Sun Herald usually supply three training programs for beginner, intermediate and expert. Of these, for most people, the City2Surf ‘Finisher Program’, (which is a beginner’s program) will be the most appropriate.
However, there are a number of things I don’t like about this program. In particular, it requires you to run five days a week for 10 weeks in the lead up to the event. For many people this will likely be more likely to lead to injury and fatigue. (Trust me, I’m speaking from experience here.)
I believe that you will be better off have two consecutive rest days per week to fully recuperate, especially if you haven’t done a lot of regular running in recent times. I also think that a running training program needs variety by way of speed, hills and variations in distance and effort.
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Updated June 2013
My tried and proven City to Surf training plan
Since 2009, I’ve shared my City2Surf training online and if you’d like to import my training calendar to your computer or phone calendar, the details are all in Running for Beginners blog post.
You don’t have to train alone, come and run with me on Facebook
Come and join our free City2Surf 100 day Challenge Facebook Group.
And please share your thoughts and training experiences over the next few months.
My Beginner to Intermediate City2Surf Training Program is now an eBook too
‘How to Break Your Fitness Slump and Comfortably Finish a Fun Run’
My full City2Surf training program is now available as an eBook from all leading online bookstores and contains a link to download the training schedule as an iCal file, so you can import it into your calendar.
Also, feel free to join my free Facebook training group the City2Surf 100 day Challenge.