Les Croupiers Running Club Forum

I have been starting to realise lately that if you want to be committed to your training you have to seriously commit to a plan.

I think its no good wanting to get the best out of yourself by building your training around your life, I think you have to build your life around your training.

I am aproaching 40 next year and I am determined to try and move forward training wise. I have asked myself what can I do to make my training more effective and I have come up with a few answers. (although there may be alot more)

To make any big strides forward I think I need to...

1. Become alot more consistent.

2. Become much more focused on speedwork.

3. Address all aspects of of physical fitness.

4. Improve things from a nutritional standpoint and generally be alot more selective about what I put in my body.

5. Race more.


I think I need to make a few tweaks to move forward and make this happen and have worked out a plan.

1.To be more consistent.

I need to reduce injury which seems to becoming more of an issue with age. In order to do that I need to reduce the stress on my body. I aim to do this by substituting a large part of my training for cycling. I am going to work off of 5km per 10 miles so I will swap roughly 33 miles of running for 100 miles of cycling.

1. Speedwork

Cycling will enable me to dedicate far more of my running training time to speedwork. Im thinking of aiming to run a 10 mile long run. Everything else will be speedwork. I will soon be free to run any Parkrun I choose.

2. Injury prevention

Im going to look at devoting time each week to yoga and also ab work. Plus the obvious routine stretches. This will reduce injury risk even further and help maintain overall general health.

3. Diet

I am going to look more carefully at my diet and make sure I have the best nutritional balance.

Another big part of this will be to detoxify my body from any unecesary medicinal toxins and replace them with a carefully measured self management programme developed by myself over the past 10 years. I feel the last pieces of the puzzle have been found in order to take this step and I do not do take it lightly.

I think to really galvanize all of these things together it is important to look at how much of an influence my job has.

Is it getting in the way?

I have changed jobs so I will now work up to 25 hours a week less with better prospects, alot less stress and only slightly less money. I have started an ebay business which is doing ok, requires minimal time to run and will more than take up any financial slack. I will also be able to commute to work which could be part of my training, saving not only more time but money too!

Less stress and hours can also minimize the chances of overtraining, improve training quality and be of huge benefit to staying healthy. The only downside is I may have to sacrifice a few evenings but this is the most constructive plan I can come up with.

It may take a bit of time to get all of these things firing eficiently and properly week in week out but this is now my new plan.

I aim to use the rest of this year as a platform to build into what will be my first year as a Vet which im hoping will be a good one. At least I now have a plan which im convinced will be far more effective and progressive than what I was doing. There is no point gaining experience if you do not make it count.

Taking it gently

My next couple of race's will be done for pleasure. I have no plans to rush anything. I plan on building things up so I have a solid foundation. I need to get back to the grass roots of why I took up the sport in the first place and learn to enjoy it again which I think is key. The theraputic benefits to me are without question!

Im sure I havent thought of everything there is, there is perhaps alot more I can do. Can anyone elaborate on any aspects of this they can give advice on i.e Cycling as I am very new to it, or any other tips they think they may have to make my training plan more effective?

I will give it a go tomorrow but bear in mind that im nowhere near as fit as you at the moment so I will most likely lag behind alot! Had a pretty dire couple of months that has lead to a bit of a rethink.

Great session tonight I really enjoyed it! I didnt struggle quite as much as I thought I would!

Great bunch of people to train with too!