We all want the same thing — run faster but make it feel easier. And if I'm being completely honest with you — for years I went about it the wrong way. I hammered every run. I chased pace on my watch. And I wondered why I was always carrying something. The answer turned out to be simpler than I thought. It starts with one number — your heart rate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's how I break it down for my athletes and for myself: 1️⃣ Know your zones. Zone 2 (62–72% of HR max) is your bread and butter. Up to 80% of your training should live here. Think of it as the foundation to your house. Without it, everything comes crashing down. 2️⃣ Easy means easy. Can you hold a conversation the whole time? If not, you're going too hard. Your easy run should feel almost embarrassingly slow. I ran my easy runs too fast for years because I was worried about what it looked like on Strava. That held me back more than I care to admit. 3️⃣ Snap out of the comfort zone 2–2.5 times a week. Track, hills, tempo, quality long runs, races — this is the sharp end. The roof to your house. Around 20–30% of your weekly training. Don't do these back to back. Your body is a sponge — it needs time to soak up the work. 4️⃣ Shift the whole house upwards. Over time, you're aiming for one of two things — same pace at a lower heart rate, or same heart rate at a faster pace. Both mean you're getting fitter. And both come from consistency. Week after week. Month after month. 5️⃣ Your heart is a muscle. Train it. In my early years I could hit Zone 5, but I couldn't hold it for long. Now I can. That didn't come from smashing myself every session — it came from building the aerobic base first. 6️⃣ Get a proper HR monitor. Chest strap or arm strap. The built-in watch monitors are great when you're sleeping. As soon as sweat gathers underneath, they start lying to you. 7️⃣ Find your actual max HR. Two simple tests — sprint up a long gradual hill for 90 seconds, or race a flat 2–5km all out. From there you can work out your zones properly instead of guessing.

👋 Welcome back Your weekly dose of what's happening in the running world — with a coaching lens on what we can actually take from it. No world championships this week. No elite drama. Just something that happened to me at Felixstowe Parkrun that I genuinely can't stop thinking about. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🇬🇧 A Fellow Dad Showing Me How It's Done I was running along the seafront. Feeling good. Camera rolling. Normal Saturday morning. Then out of nowhere — a dad pushing a baby in a pram came absolutely flying past me. I'm not exaggerating. The camera caught him hitting 24 km/h. That's 2:28 pace. Pushing a pram. I wanted to get in his slipstream. But even he was too quick for me. Machine dad. 💪 His name's Luke Whitwell — a runner from Felixstowe Road Runners who's been smashing sub-20 parkruns with the buggy week after week. Currently chasing sub-19. With a child in the front seat. The kid must have thought he was at Ferrari World. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why I'm sharing this: Happy Easter Monday to my fellow runners in the UK 🐣 — and Happy Family Day to the members in South Africa 🇿🇦 Either way, today's about the people who matter most. And Luke reminded me of something I think about a lot as a dad and a runner. Running doesn't have to come at the expense of family. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Some of the best runners I coach push prams at parkrun. Run while their kids cycle alongside. Get their miles in at 5am so they're home for breakfast. They don't find time. They make it work. And honestly — watching someone push a pram faster than most people can run without one? That's the most motivating thing I've seen all week. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 😏 Your turn. I want to hear from you on this one:

I went from a 3:17 marathon to a 2:19. From a 25:14 5K to a 14:34. And if I'm being completely honest with you — a huge part of that improvement had nothing to do with running more miles. It came from getting serious about recovery. I spent years thinking the answer was more sessions. More mileage. More intensity. And yeah, that stuff matters. But if you're not recovering properly between those sessions, you're leaving a massive amount of progress on the table. Recovery isn't a rest day. It's a discipline. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are the 10 things that made the biggest difference — to me and to the athletes I coach every week: 1️⃣ Protein within 30 minutes of every hard session — have your shake ready before you even start. 20-24g. Don't wait until you've showered and sorted yourself out. By then, you've already missed the window. 2️⃣ Electrolytes, not just water — start every morning with a hydration tablet. The difference between feeling flat at 8km and feeling strong is often just this. 3️⃣ Good carbs before, protein after — you can't out-train a bad diet. Fuel it properly and it'll repay you on the roads. 4️⃣ Warm up and cool down every single time — I know it's boring. I know you're tight for time. But runners who skip these get injured. Runners who do them consistently stay healthy for years. 5️⃣ 8 hours of sleep — since having kids, I haven't always managed this. And I've felt every single missed hour on my runs. No app, supplement or training hack replaces sleep. 6️⃣ Yoga or mobility work once a week — when I went to my first class, I looked like a baby giraffe doing downward dog. Now I don't miss a week. Completely different runner for it. 7️⃣ Compression socks post-session — my calves used to twitch like mad after big tempos. 2-3 hours in compression socks after a hard run and it sorts itself out. 8️⃣ Legs up the wall — 30-45 minutes. Free. Simple. Works. Do it in the evening while watching TV. No extra time needed.

Hi all I have run numerous marathons, London 3 times and Manchester Marathon a few times too. I ran a half marathon in the last six months at 1:42 so I have entered the Manchester half in October to get a sub 1:40. I have been a prison officer for 34 years also. Nice to meet you all and be apart of a running community.

Boom shakalaka