training by 25 to 40 per cent. "At first try to achieve as much as possible on a minimum of training," he advises. He adds that older runners perform better on less training because the margin between optimum training and overtraining is small, making

for is anaemia.How hard does hard training need to be? U/A Distance runners obviously need to work hard to achieve good performances, but we know it's all too easy to overtrain. What do you reckon is too much? Is it necessary to train twice a day? How slow

is expressed as time rather than distance – this is to accommodate slower runners who may not be able to run 20 miles in under 2 hrs 30 mins. Time on feet has been shown to be the best way of judging the level of training that prevents runners from overtraining

into tears when Paula went over the finish line on TV - she had thought I was going to win – (bless)!What would I do differently: listen to my body more during training – I over-trained early on and was out of action for about three weeks in March due