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Good health: we need it for running and much more

Good health: we need it for running and much more

Today, I would like to deviate a bit from running training to talk about something relating to the foundation for success in all sport: good health. You cannot improve your performance unless you are already in good health. The human body is an amazing design, and it will always prioritise critical repairs over ‘luxury’ repairs. So if you have been exposed to a toxin (for instance) or you are…

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Virtual Marathon - an opportunity to explore what taper strategy works best for you.

Virtual Marathon – an opportunity to explore what taper strategy works best for you.

Normally around this time of year, thousands of runners around Ireland will be starting their marathon taper as they make final preparations for the KBC Dublin Marathon. The race may be virtual this year, but it provides a great opportunity for runners to practice running the distance and getting their tapering right for when the real race returns. In this article, Head Coach at RCI René Borg…

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Eoin Flynn joins RCI's coaching team

Eoin Flynn joins RCI’s coaching team

Running Coach Ireland is delighted to announce the appointment of Eoin Flynn as Assistant Head Coach. 

Eoin has a wealth of experience in athletics having competed across track, road, cross country and mountains over the last 16 years.  

Eoin has completed in close to 250 races with 82 race wins across the different disciplines with some of his highlights including: 

National Senior 800m…

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Educated Runner Audio Blog #4: Recovery in COVID-19 times part

Educated Runner Audio Blog #4: Recovery in COVID-19 times part

In this fourth episode I go into detais about the recovery tips I discussed with Eoin Flynn on the 2nd episode of the Trail Running Ireland podcast.

We talk about:

– What is recovery really? – How do we know what recovery activities to prioritise? – What are some good examples particularly relevant to our current COVID-19 lockdown?

Listen directly on Podomatic

Note my audio blogs become…

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Educated Runner Audio Blog #3: Running in COVID-19 times part 2

Educated Runner Audio Blog #3: Running in COVID-19 times part 2

The final follow-on on my segment with Eoin Flynn on the Trail Running Ireland podcast is done. Listen below or check the resources and the transcript here.

The first question was ‘what are the best training formats in a 2 km radius’ and ‘how to find substitutes for the training you cannot do in your 2 km radius’.

Listen to podcast

RESOURCES

WORKOUTS

Out & Back, Circuit Run,…

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Educated Runner audio blog #1

Educated Runner audio blog #1

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/educatedrunner/episodes/2020-04-22T04_27_13-07_00

For all the harm this crisis has done, the cancellation of various races and holidays I was due to organise has allowed me to catch up on work a bit even as I work half-time (looking after the kids the other half of the day).

This means moving forward so long-overdue projects including audio/video content…

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Trail Running Ireland podcast – episode 1 Yesterday, I was glad to appear on the first episode of the new Trail Running Ireland podcast…

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A run for the times: Circuit runs

One run bound to become popular in the coming two weeks is the ‘Circuit run’. I originally adopted this phrase for a run described to me by Keith Livingstone, author of ‘Healthy Intelligent Training’. A run being used by his ‘HIT Squad’ of young talented high school runners in New Zealand.

As the name implies it requires a circuit. With the Irish population currently advised to exercise within a…

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TRAINING: Adapting to the changing times

The great coach Bill Shankley said: “Some people think running is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that. “* Now, look, running is not a matter of life and death and the corona-virus is for some people so here I’ll do you a favour: I won’t spout my uneducated opinion about what you should do on the virus and instead give you a well-educated opinion about what…

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Mistaking the icing for the cake As 50 years of practice and the recent Stephen Seiler study has shown, the most important determinant of success in running is ‘volume’.

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REPORT: Wicklow Novice

After a one-year absence from Novice cross-country, we had a men’s team representing us last weekend for the county season opener in Roundwood. The men’s challenge was to run 6 x 1 km laps of a hilly field and combine the best four scorers in an attempt to win team medals.

Debutante Richard Costelloe had a storming run: going off boldly in the top half of the field and holding on for a fine 9th…

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Predicting pacing in the hills

Predicting pacing in the hills

In the microcosm that is our own private goal-setting, the question ‘what time will I run for this trail race?’ emerges regularly. I have used a particular way of estimating performances for some time and I will share it here.

It’s harder to estimate what times you can shoot for when you run on trails, hills, mountains, and fells. Some purists will, not without justification, say that it’s also…

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Real world goals will do it

Real world goals will do it

Runners today have access to more measurements and metrics than ever before. Once upon a time an estimate of distance and the time on your stop-watch was the maximum you could hope for. Then the heart rate revolution happened and in later years GPS enabled real-time measurement of distance and pace and finally an estimate of power output, Ground Contact, stride length and more.

The ‘Unreal’ World

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Change of my business

Change of my business

One of the advantages of not being a ‘faceless corporation’ is that I can communicate about changes to my business the way you’d have a chat in the pub (or cafe as it is these days).

7 years in the making

It’s been 7 years since I began the venture ‘ChampionsEverywhere’ with Jason Kehoe, the first athlete I began to coach, as my business partner. Our goal was to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for…

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Training people when time is short

Training people when time is short

I’ll admit it here: as a professional coach I sometimes have to make business decisions along with coaching decisions. Ask my wife and she’ll  tell you I’m not nearly enough for a businessman but here’s the rub: if I told every person who wanted to work with me exactly what I think they must do, most of my clients probably would not be able to work with me. There’s a simple reason for that.

It…

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Season planning - part 1 (pleasing everyone!)

Season planning – part 1 (pleasing everyone!)

Going into each new year, I have to sit down and plan out roughly what workouts I want to do with the club.

What complicates this ideally simple task is the number of different priorities, experience levels and interests in every athletics club. Rarely do we have more than 2 or 3 runners targetting the same race and when we do it is generally ‘by decree’ such as when we tell the membership that…

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