Meet the runners: Sophie Ward
The marathon is edging ever closer. We hope you are getting your training in and are healthy and well. So far, you’ve met Kevin and Nathan. But there are a few other runners from the club tackling the marathon this spring. Today you’ll meet Sophie Ward. Tell us about yourself: I’m Sophie Ward, 25 years old. I live with my fiancé Matt and my dog Yogi :). I’m a physiotherapist. What is your sporting back ground? I’ve tried lots of different sports including; ballet, tap, horse-riding, swimming and triathlon. Finally settling on running. What is your goal for the VLM/ other spring marathon? Its my first marathon, so just getting over the finish line would be a massive achievement! However, I’d love to finish sub 3hrs. What does your weekly training look like? Sunday – Long Run Monday – Brat Run (8mile recovery run) Tuesday – Rest/Pilates Wednesday – Brat…
Marathon Mondays: Rest and Recovery
Welcome again to Marathon Mondays! We are going to focus on the third part of the performance triangle – Rest and Recovery. Find out why rest and recovery are as vital to training as the actual running itself. ‘Rest’ is often perceived as a dirty word amongst runners, with many fearing that they will lose all of their hard-earned fitness in an instant. However, rest and recovery are probably the two most underrated facets of training. Whilst the world’s best runners train very hard, they also take their recovery super seriously and are supremely lazy (no joke) when they’re not putting one foot in front of another! Just what do we mean with rest and recovery? There is a difference. To paraphrase a famous phrase of our time: “Rest means rest.” Do nothing. Nada. Zip. This effectively means you can do anything you want, except running and exercising. Recovery,…
BRAT PB Success Indoors
The final indoor meeting of the season took place at the Birmingham High Performance Centre on Saturday 17th March with a number of our athletes putting in some final preparation for the forthcoming outdoor season – although judging by the current weather, spring and summer still seem a very long away off! There were a number of BRATs competing across a variety of events and the personal bests certainly flowed; In the long jump, Maisie Scamp went over 4 metres in three of her four attempts with a best of 4.08m. Josie Williams equalled her pb with a leap of 4.09 whilst Monique Thomas did a unique double with pbs in the shot and long jump. Lily Smith also did the double with pbs in the shot and discus – the discus competition being held outside in blizzard conditions with a paramedic on standby, presumably to treat athletes for frost…