of running five or six one-mile reps at 10K pace, but just remember that you have to do this, without any rest, in a race anyway. Try to fit in at least one session a week, and mix pure speed sessions with speed-endurance sessions for the best of both worlds

Ease into faster running with these introductory sessions:1. Easy fartlekFartlek, or speed play, is variable-paced running that emphasises creativity. During a 30-minute run, choose objects to run to – lamp-posts, trees, buildings, other runners

at your brisker pace, but also in your daily runs (so 40 minutes will start to feel like 30 minutes, or 9:30 miling like 10-minute miling). Don't worry if you're not 'fast'. Your session should just be faster than usual. Here's how to start - just do one

in the morning; it's not fast enough'. In reality, the ability to be a world-class marathon runner does in part depend on being able to absorb the training over two or three years. I don't know of any elite marathon runner who doesn't average around 100 miles a

and a long run of 20+ miles at the weekend. My mileage peaked at about 56 miles during training.For my marathon in October I plan on trying to reach about 70-80 miles a week including two quality sessions. I'm going to follow a schedule that has four

major study carried out on marathon runners discovered that after 12 weeks of twice-weekly hill sessions, the athletes’ running economy had improved by three per cent. Although the subjects were trained runners, that improvement would still have helped

differently. After my hill session, I went for an easy four miles and found it really hard work. The last couple of weeks have been odd - a recurring injury, some great runs, and then a surprisingly bad one to finish off the fortnight.Steve says: Rob is still

improvements, often four to six per cent. No surprise there. Interval training has been a favourite of top coaches and runners since the end of World War II. This type of training involves fast intervals of two minutes to 10 minutes at about your two-mile race

find that I can run for two hours and hardly be fatigued but make me do two miles at threshold pace and I am in bed by 8pm with a warm drink! Overall though, my training is going really well. I've felt a touch tired during a few sessions but all my

much I should drink with the risk it would make me run slower.It was really congested at the start and I got quite cross with people in front of me. At around Mile 10, I was only about a minute down on marathon pace which was fine – I was planning