• We learn from David 's story that positive self talk is essential to success. That goals take time and diligent effort. That the support of a coach can help you achieve your goals. This newbie-to-running shares his journey training for his first marathon. 
  
  Major milestone:
  I have two that, to me, I would see as my biggest milestones. Loosing weight, and in my first year of running, I am proud to say I completed my first marathon in Dublin, Ireland.
• What is the secret to your success?
  I find the secret to my success is creating a balance to my daily and weekly life. I set a weekly plan based on my work schedule and how I will spend my time on days off. Training for races and what types of training I do both in the gym and outside of the gym. I also set myself weekly/monthly goals that I aim to achieve and how I aim to achieve these goals over time.
• What is the biggest obstacle to reaching your goals and how do you get over it?
  I find that one of my biggest obstacles is training alone, I tend to do my training alone. I do plan on joining a local running club soon. I have noticed it is great to run with others and it can be great motivation for not just yourself but others too.
• What is the most rewarding part of training?
  I can be honest and say in the past year I never realised how much stronger I could become both physically and mentally. I become more positive and driven to achieve your goals.
• What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
  The best advice I can give is don’t be afraid to talk to others in the community, and the trainers from Runcoach are always happy to give some great advice. Always remember to tell yourself "I can and I will" and instead of saying to yourself one day I will do this and that, you allow yourself to say "today I will achieve my targets I set out for myself".
• Anything else you would like to share?
  I find the support from the coaches here is amazing. They are so easy to talk to and share your progress with. A huge thank you to everyone at Runcoach who have supported my training and my progress.
• What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
  I think one of the great things about Runcoach is not only the support and advice they offer personally, but their posts on Instagram can be very inspiring too.

Uma is a story if inspiration. She shares the importance of consistency in training, and how following a training plan can help everyone remain accountable in the pursuit of their goals. But most importantly, Uma shares the benefit of the coach-athlete relationship and we at Runcoach are grateful for all of the runners we get to support.

What is the most rewarding part of training?
Self awareness - Realizing that I am stronger than I thought - physically and mentally.

What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
Stick to the schedule that the Runcoach app gives you. Report back to the coaches via email. It creates a commitment. Don't skip out on speed work. It was very challenging for me, and I had no track nearby where I felt safe to train alone in the dark hours of the morning. I tried to get in as many speed workouts as I could and that helped a lot to improve my pace.

Anything else you would like to share?
I would like to say that the timely encouragement from Coach Cawood and Coach Hiruni went a very long way to help me PR my race. I felt like they were my personal coaches. During a difficult phase during the race, when I wanted to walk the bridge, I told myself that I would not let Coach Cawood and Coach Hiruni down, I would run that bridge. And I did it!

What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
The overall experience was very awesome. I will do it again. The app needs some upgrades. For tempo workouts, I reported warm up, cool down, drills+strides, speed run and cool down separately so coaches could see my pace, but the app did not total them correctly. So I had to delete all of that and enter one aggregate number which did not show the effort I put into the workout.


Share your story here!

You may have heard it, but we will say it again: The long run is the most important run of your week.

Personally, the long run is my favorite run of the week too. It doesn’t always feel good, but I am always proud of myself once it’s completed because I know fitness was gained and mental strength too. But why is the long run so important? Why does the training plan have up and down weeks with total mileage/minutes? Is it really possible to finish a marathon if my long run never covers the entire distance in training? Here are our answers.

First, the importance of the long run stems from the cells. Runs exceeding 60 minutes help create more capillaries within the system, the more capillaries in your body, the more efficient oxygen can be transported and delivered to your muscles. Thus, increasing your endurance level and ability to run faster and further. As you feel stronger, and you accomplish mileage you never thought possible, you gain confidence.  You start to learn that you can push harder and longer than ever before, and that is huge for the mental game come race day.

Next, the up and down weeks of mileage may look random, but we have a plan. We train you to run 2 weeks hard, 1 week easy. This cycle of training prepares the body as you work to build up fatigue, push through fatigue, and then recover. The adaptations that build fitness come when we soak up the training during the down week before increasing the mileage higher than before. For our marathon runners, these two challenging long run weeks back to back can help simulate the second half of the marathon with the accumulation of fatigue.

 Last, the long run is more about time on feet than actual miles covered. Exceeding more than 3.5 hours of running during training has been known to have diminishing returns. Meaning that running longer than 210 minutes can negatively affect your body’s ability to have quality in training and could leave you sick, overly fatigued, or injured. Depending on your pace, any run 16 miles and over will allow you to successfully finish the marathon distance. It’s important to trust the process and know that with a taper, you will feel strong and ready to conquer 26.2 miles at the peak of your training program.

If you’re like me, you can’t wait for the next long run to get out the door and increase your body’s efficiency now that you know the goal of your most important run of the week.