Lisa joined the Coach Parry Training Club in November 2020 after attending one of our Faster Beyond 50 Masterclasses. I clearly remember her onboarding call, we discussed her running and her goals. She has predominantly done Parkruns over the years, but with no Parkruns around due to COVID lockdowns, she wanted to tackle the 10k. She had done some strength work over the years but predominantly this had been focused on yoga.
Lisa’s lifetime best for 10km was 1:05:15 and her recent best in the last 12 months was 1:07:55. As a result, we put her on the Sub65 min 10km plan. And we encouraged her to join the live strength classes on the CoachParry Training Club, starting off with the Wednesday beginners technique class and the Monday core session.
She flourished in these sessions very quickly, mostly due to her commitment and consistency, and very soon we “graduated” her from the Wednesday beginners technique session to the Wednesday intermediate strength session too. She has continued to stick to both of these strength classes with excellent consistency, along with her Sub65min 10km plan…
Let’s fast forward 12 weeks…
Lisa is coming up to her “race day”. She’s planning a course on her own due to no live races around thanks to COVID. Lisa is trying to plan her pacing strategy and asks the coaches in the CoachParry forum on how best to pace herself. We had a look at her 5km time trials she had run through her 12-week plan. She had improved her 5km time trials from 25:32 down to 25:01!
Coach Markus pointed out to Lisa in the forum that she had the potential of running around a 52min 10k based on those time trials, and he advised her on the correct pacing strategy. Lisa took this advice to heart and programmed it into her watch and she landed up running a 52:27 min 10km, on her own!
Essentially that is around 14 minutes quicker than her recent best 10km. I would’ve loved to see what she would’ve been able to do in an actual race!
For sure Lisa’s 5km potential had always pointed towards this level of 10km time, but we chose the more conservative route by putting her on the Sub65min 10km based on her recent times and clearly the slower progression and Lisa’s commitment to the plan paid off!
When asking Lisa what was the biggest contributor to this success, she had this to say:
“Following the instructions in the program as closely as possible, although I may have been on a program that was slightly easy for me to begin with! The strength classes also made a difference in building my strength”
In my coaching opinion having watched Lisa’s journey so far from onboarding, beginners technique strength sessions, more intermediate strength sessions, her feedback in the forum and seeing her overall progression, I believe her success is 100% down to her consistency in both her running and strength training.
Lisa has followed the plan to the T, the training paces, the scheduled sessions and the strength sessions. And I’ve watched her get stronger and stronger in those live strength sessions over the last 12 weeks. It’s been awesome to watch her progress and I’m so chuffed with her 10k result at the end of these 12 weeks.
Of course there were challenges…
Of course, none of this comes without its own struggles. Lisa has intermittent knee concerns, which she manages with some extra exercises from Pete Ogoscue’s book. And she says there were many mornings where she didn’t feel like waking up at 7am for the live strength class but took advantage of the 3pm strength class if she wanted to have a slightly slower morning and focus on recovery (or she also utilised the recorded strength sessions if she missed the live classes altogether)
Lisa goes on to say:
“The other important thing is that I’ve really enjoyed doing the program and having the support of the structure and the community that is behind the program
Thanks for creating such a great way to train, especially in these very strange times”
We love the community we have built here at CoachParry and it is amazing to watch runners excelling in their goals. And we have loved being able to create a community of runners all aiming to their individual goals albeit in the support and motivation of each other in these very strange times! It’s helped make us feel somewhat connected again, even though we’re all in some sort of lockdown.
Lisa’s next steps are to improve on this 10km time, she is now following the Sub50 min 10km plan, with some minor adjustments to her pacing. I’m excited to watch Lisa’s journey from here and see her smash this next 10km goal! Thank you for being such an awesome part of the CoachParry Training Club!
If you’d like to discover how to train smarter then be sure to save your seat in our upcoming 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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