The best part of coaching is watching your clients/athletes come to the realization that “wait, I can do this” and watching that realization bear fruit, be it in the form of race wins, achieving Personal Bests, ticking off goals or even just building the confidence to go out there and give it a try.
Glynis Mauldon is one of those clients who put her mind to something while there has been some failure and struggles, she’s dusted herself off and got back at it. In her own words “I’m stubborn”
Glynis started running in her late 30s and as she describes, has been running/plodding along for over 20 years (you can work that one out). Her main goal was to lose weight and get fit. As the bug bit, and is the case with many of us, her goals shifted, this time to run the Comrades Marathon one day.
Tackling the Comrades Marathon
Now for those of you who don’t know what the Comrades Marathon is, it is an 89km (roughly 55 miles) race held each year between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, in South Africa. Each year, the race direction alternates, one year starting in Pietermaritzburg (inland) and finishing in Durban (coastal) which is described as the down run, and the following year, the other way around which is described as the up run.
Having seconded and coached many athletes at this event, trust me when I say, it is gruelling to watch and support, let alone participate.
Glynis has started 23 Comrades Marathons and finished 13 of them. This is an incredible achievement considering all she wanted to do was lose weight and get fit.
Glynis’ journey with CoachParry
Glynis found Coach Parry towards the end of 2018 and started following our Comrades program, to help her improve her time and get through the race a little easier. Her next Comrades Marathon was to be in 2020 and, well, we won’t say any more about 2020.
Glynis then attended our Faster Beyond 50 Masterclass (You can register for the next one by clicking here) and started training according to our FBF Training Framework. After her 1-on-1 call with one of our coaches, she decided to focus on improving her times in the shorter distances by focusing on improved speed.
Currently, Glynis is following a Sub 2hr 20 half marathon program and as prescribed, every 4 weeks sees her running a 5km time trial as a progress test if you’d like. Week 8 was where the magic happened for her. Here is how she describes it:
To give some insight, Glynis lives in Petersfield in the UK, explaining the cold conditions. To add to this, when she says she “stopped twice”, those were short walk breaks to catch her breath and ensured she DID NOT stop her watch.
So while she may have got her pacing strategy slightly off forcing the walk breaks, that is a massive improvement from just “plodding” along to running her 5km PB of 29:32, in the middle of a 21km program. Just think if she didn’t need to take those breaks.
Glynis attributes the following to her success:
“Having a program suited for me (the Faster Beyond 50), the coaches are there to support me on the Coach Parry Forum, the podcasts are also so informative, one is never too old to learn something new. Most of all to be consistent and learn to pace myself”
Her goal for the rest of this ear is to continue to improve on her shorter distance times and especially the time trials.
As with many a runner, Glynis has had her fair share of minor running injuries but fortunately, nothing serious enough to keep her out for too long. She has found that the addition of strength training to her program has played a big role in her consistency as well as her improved performance…
…Glynis still struggles with the motivation to train on her own, especially in the cold, dark UK climate. She jokes: “I do a lot of talking to myself, haha”
Glynis, we are so proud of you and your stubbornness… I mean consistency. Keep chipping away at it and fingers crossed, Comrades will return enough for you to have that dig at smashing it.
If you’d like to run pain and injury-free, improve your endurance and course run well (and faster) beyond 50, then register for our upcoming free Faster Beyond 50 Masterclass below:
Join us for a free online presentation of the…
The Faster Beyond 50 Masterclass
…and discover how you can run well (and faster) as you get older, without training more or harder than you currently are, all while avoiding injury.
If it feels like you’re training harder than ever but not running the paces you’d like to be running or if you’re constantly tired, fatigued or running in some sort of pain, then this is specifically for you.
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