Osteitis Pubis
On the 9th of November 2025 I graduated from Couch to 5 km for a 3rd time. Despite having been a regular runner since 2012, a running coach since 2021 and having run numerous marathons (including winning a very, very sparsely attended one), I found myself having to completely stop running and most other exercise…
Planning for Groups
I’ve been the coach for Manchester Harriers & A. C. Senior Endurance Group for almost 3 years now; each week I prescribe 3 sessions for the group. I started out by creating a spreadsheet with a technical focus for the week, a fitness focus for the week and then set two sessions that would occur…
How to Run in Zone 2
I’ve started using Threads a lot more and answering random questions that come up. The one that seems to come up most frequently and I feel I can never quite do justice to answering in a short thread is “How do I run in zone 2? Whenever I try my HR spikes and I have…
The Frog
Or “How to boil your athletes alive” or, more formally, 12×400 with reducing rest. I’m not 100% sure what inspired me to write this session; we were nearing the end of road and track season and starting to train for the cross country season. Track and road racing tends to have me focusing on short…
DNF
It had to happen eventually; I’ve DNSed (Did Not Start) a fair few races due to injury and scheduling clashes but today was my first DNF (Did Not Finish). Today was the ROC Scotland; the pre-race video came out a few weeks ago and discussed the bike choice with the presenter suggesting that a mountain…
Hurtling Towards HM Race Day
I have had the pleasure of coaching a stellar group of athletes for Manchester Half 2023; we’re now less than two weeks away and the standard paranoia is starting to creep in for some of them. So lets go through some key items – there’s plenty of other writing on all of these subjects, so…
How to Run a sub-20 Minute 5 km
I have a theory that any man (for women the equivalent is probably 23 minutes) between 20 and 40 with no underlying health conditions can be trained to run a sub-20 minute 5 km, obviously if you have a lot of weight to lose or have never run before it will take a while, but…
It’s The Final Countdown…
To coin a phrase used by a number of my first time marathon athletes when this landed on their doormats a couple of days before their last long run; “Shit just got real”. In the last few weeks before your first marathon the reality of the situation can suddenly hit you; so I have a…
Broken
I’m injured, well strictly speaking I may not be injured, but my nervous system is telling me I’m injured so the end effect is much the same; over the last couple of days there have been points where I’ve been unable to walk without assistance let alone run. Anyway, this post isn’t to take you…
A Week in The Life (Part 2)
In part 1 of this post I went through the process of how I plan my upcoming training, this time we’re going to look at what actually happened… Monday, rest (or recovery) day; nailed it! All green, all ‘workouts’ complete – but to be fair nailing a rest day should not be a challenge, although…
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Coach Alex Masidlover 