their experience of pre-competition stress. He says, "The world's best athletes set lots of different goals – if you go into a race with 15 goals, then you're sure to achieve at least some of them.' Set a variety of goals to make sure you come away happy. You could

but by the time I became injured, in August 2003, I was training quite seriously. I was running about 24 minutes for 5K, 48 minutes for 10K, 1:20 for 10 miles and 4:11 for the marathon.Somehow I damaged my knee cartilage. The mistake I made was wasting a huge

winner, of the Vitruvian Half-Ironman and the 2005 London Duathlon"I like to have everything else ready and organised so all I have to do for the last hour before the race is get my body ready. I do a 15-minute jog to warm up then five sets of strides

ASICS PRO Team sports psychologist Dr Victor Thompson shares top strategies for setting targets, beating race day nerves and debriefing after the event.Whether it's a 5K or a spring marathon, your first race or your fiftieth, Dr Thompson's tips are a recipe for race day success.

For nearly 20 years, I wrote for RUNNER’S WORLD and its predecessors, Running and Jogging. I have also given countless clinics and seminars, coached dozens of athletes and met tens of thousands of runners at races around the country. Throughout

of inactive mums. Those who burned 2000 calories per week delivered babies weighing 10 per cent more.20. Women who run alone should take precautions. Leave a note at home stating when you left, where you’ll be running and when you expect to return. Carry a

could even schedule a massage on your rest days to further enhance your recovery.Be patientIf the damage is already done, you won't undo it immediately; it will take you 10-14 days to recover from several weeks of overtraining, and several weeks

’t find 30 minutes to devote to a run, head out for a quick 10-15 minutes in the morning, then slip in another 10-minute trot later on that evening.Tip from the trenches: “I recently bought my seven-year-old daughter a bike, and she now rides

1. SpeedThe Session: 4 x 40m sprints (with 3 mins recovery), then 4 x 300m sprints (with 6 mins recovery)Tony Minichiello says: "Speed training in heptathlon is crucial as there's an element of it in every event - just as there is in every race

of the participants running a 62-mile race consumed 14,000 millilitres of liquid; another who ran only 26 miles, drank only 280 millilitres. The latter runner, not surprisingly, showed the most loss of vascular fluid, resulting in thickened blood plasma and impaired