If you are a regular reader of my posts you will see that I have worked with Laura a few times before. Over the past few years it has been a joy to watch her improve.
During the autumn of 2021 we decided to work towards a new half marathon pb at the Leicester Half on February the 27th 2022. This gave us a long enough campaign to get Laura into top shape and we had also decided to use the Thames Valley Cross Country season to increase Laura's leg speed. These races are a very useful tool, they are long enough to give an athlete an excellent training session but not so long as to smash an athletes legs to bits so that they cannot train effectively in the days after.
Laura executed an almost faultless campaign despite some really tough times with a very busy job. It was towards the end of league season that the penny dropped with me after another athlete around Laura's pace pointed out the form she was in. Laura was running incredibly well and was capable of an outstanding time should we get the weather and no illness come target.
And so it proved, Laura finished the Leicester Half Marathon in an outstanding 1 hour 39 minutes and 1 second! This is a full 5 minutes and 40 seconds improvement from the Chelmsford Half that she only ran back in early October 2021! Myself and Laura are so happy about this time especially after Laura spent many months injured with a persistent back problem during 2020 and 2021. What is more interesting is that Laura spends plenty of time training on a bike, it has been an absolutely integral part of Laura's improvement these last couple of years. I am a big fan of cycling, add it to running training in the correct manner and it will only improve an athlete's race speed.
Every time I train Laura it is a very fulfilling experience and I look forward to working with her again in the near future.
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