If you were paid to run for a living, you’d take it very seriously. Look at elite athletes. They prepare for nine months and perform for three. With everything focussed on peaking for a big event.

But we’re not paid to run. We run, because running:

gives us head space
makes us feel confident, resilient and empowered
is our therapy
helps us feel stronger and fitter

We run, because we can.

I was on Facebook the other day and saw a post by a runner saying that they were injured. They were so frustrated by not being able to get out and run that they had decided to leave the group and sign out of Strava while they were recovering, so they wouldn’t have the torture of seeing all the other runners out enjoying their runs.

We don’t want our therapy and head space maker and confidence booster and fitness tool to be taken away from us by injury.

But what can we do?

Well if we look at how elite athletes train, we can take from their plan what might work for us. And one element of their training that we should try to emulate is the pattern of rest, prepare, perform, rest, prepare, perform.

Repetitive running creates overuse areas in your musculature and rest gives our bodies the opportunity for regeneration. If we run all year round, and never give our bodies sufficient time to rest, recover and reset, we’re setting ourself up for poor performance and injuries.

Ready to schedule your next race?

Here’s what I do;

Imagine you’ve picked a marathon on Saturday 6th August 2022.
If you were to download a typical marathon training plan it might suggest an 18-week period building up to race day. Counting back 18 weeks, it means we’ll be starting this in early April 2022.
I suggest you count back a further eight weeks to the start of February and take this time to prepare in a pre-season training period to set yourself up for success.

In this eight weeks I look at three areas:

Weeks one and two;

Rest. Total rest. For weeks one and two walking is the most vigorous exercise you should do in this period. During this time of rest all micro tears, internal strains and injuries have an opportunity to heal.

Weeks three to eight;

Mobility. This is a time to look at areas that are tight and restricted with stretching and mobility work.
Repetitive running tightens your hips, quads and hip flexors. Tightness restricts movement. For running, restricted movement is a negative. Tight muscles also create another issue, it inhibits the firing of its opposite muscle, known as ‘reciprocal inhibition’. If your hip flexors are tight, your glutes (buttocks) are inhibited. Your glutes are the biggest, strongest muscle in your body, and one of their jobs is to propel you forward when you run.

Functional Strength. We are looking for improvement in the organisation and coordination of the muscular system we use in our running.
Functional movement is inhibited by mobility and stability. The target for an endurance runner is to be strong without being big. To have a very efficient running style you need to have good strength in your whole system.

During weeks three to eight we continue to including some light running to maintain elasticity in the tendons and preserve a certain level of aerobic activity. We want to land at the start of our 18-week training plan rested, and ready to take on the challenge ahead.

My upcoming online digital course, The Resilient Runner, will support runners like you improve mobility, correct imbalance and increase stability to improve pace and help you to run injury free. If you’re interested in finding out more, drop your name below and we’ll let you know once it opens for enrollment.

Why I include pre-season training