So this weekend seen the fist Swansea half marathon. It was a sell out with over 2000 people turning out for the event. Now distance running has never been my ‘thing’ I used to run for my school and local harriers as a youngster in 100 and 200m sprint, hurdles and the 4 x 100 relay, which I was very good at, but when it came to anything further I struggled. We are all individual and I’m sure the world would be very boring if we were all good at everything 🙂 
I started a running club with my clients, mainly my Personal training clients who hated running but needed to fit this in around the sessions they were doing with me, but were not managing to do it on their own……so Saturday mornings we started a run club, which was going great, until I had the bad news about my back problem and I was advised to no longer run. Due to this one of my clients and now very good friend Nicola, took over the run club for me and took the ladies out every week. They gradually improved with my advice and Nicolas support.
As I’m sure you’ve all experienced these types of things start off great then slowly people drop off and eventually you end up with a couple of hardcore, determined people who have stuck at it, improved and want to do even better. I think this is amazing and wish all of my clients had this drive and determination. The 2 runners left were Nicola and Sharon who had stuck together as a team.
During the time we created our Shapes run club, unfortunately Nicola’s mum was taken ill and diagnosed with Lymphoma. As you can imagine we were all devastated, however Nicola stayed strong and held her family together through this terrible time. One of the ways she did this was to focus on entering a half marathon to raise money for the Lukaemia Lymphoma Myeloma department at our local hospital Singleton, where her mum received a huge amount of support. Sharon decided to sign up too and they began their training. With constant support, encouragement and advice from myself they did amazing and on the day, which was very hot, came over the finish line in a fantastic time of 2 hours and 6 minutes. For ladies who had just started distance running a few months before this was a massive achievement and I am so proud of them.
This was totally out of the girls comfort zone, but was something that with the correct advice on training and nutrition they were more than capable of completing it. Their diets and training changed quite a lot as they were previously doing a lot of weighted training and watching their carbohydrates. Once they started running more, we decreased the weighted session for them to include 3 runs a week and introduced more carbohydrates to support their energy usage. This along with appropriate food supplementation of Alkalising salts, Vitamin C, ultimate greens drink and Cardio fuel and amino work capacity pre workout for improved performance and to aid recovery.
So if you have a goal to complete any type of event, be positive, remember you can do anything you put your mind and maximum effort to. Get the right advice and go for it!!!! I highly recommend Phil Richards Performance supplements, you can check these out online at http://bit.ly/phpnutrition
Keep fit and healthy, remember health is wealth 🙂
Emma x