Good Run Guide: 40 Great Scenic Runs in England & Wales

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How much running should I do each week? It is possible to run as little as 10 miles per week and still achieve a good level of fitness and participate in shorter distance races. This is very much dependent on your personal goals, your current level of fitness, the time you have available and most importantly, how much your body can cope with; there is no set recommendation that suits everyone. One of the best ways to improve your overall running performance is to combine several different types of running into a structured weekly schedule. By doing this you will improve different aspects of your fitness, provide greater opportunity for recovery between training sessions and reduce the risk of injury. In addition, not only will it help to better condition your body for running, it is likely to provide added interest and variety to help keep you motivated.

Always warm up and cool down for approx. 10 mins. before and after Tempo, Hill and Interval sessions. Comparing with other Runners - By factoring out age and sex it is possible for two different runners to compare their performance for the same run on even terms, enabling people to compete with each other regardless of age and sex. You will often find that Running Clubs talk a lot about Age-Grading as it provides a way for Club Members to compare their race performances, irrespective of how old they are.Due to ongoing Covid situation the First Race is now on 21st July. Dates of 2nd and 3rd not changed. If you are not quite at this level, take a look at our Beginners Guide to Running article, which also contains a Beginners 5K Training Plan. We recommend Easy rather than Steady Runs as part of a training schedule aimed at performance improvement. However, if you would like to include Steady Runs in your tarining, we suggest that you substitute them for some of your Easy runs.

Spread out your training sessions across the week so that you don't do two consecutive hard sessions. Select a race where your finish time reflects your current performance level and where the race is of a simailar type (hilliness and terrain) to the one you plan to run, as this will improve the accuracy of the prediction (i.e. don't choose a hilly cross-country race if you are predicting a time for a flat road race). The following table describes a number of common types of running and the benefits of each. It also sets out our recommended guidelines on effort levels and distance for medium distance runners (running distances between 3 miles to 10 miles) who are aiming to improve performance.This is hard running at near maximum effort and should only be undertaken for short periods at a time. Generally, Interval sessions should be around 2-5 minutes bursts each with equal or less time of slow recovery jogs in between. Fartleks are sessions with intermittent hard and easy running, with varied length bursts and slightly shorter recovery times in between than with Interval running.