• At Runcoach, we provide training paces for every single run, and the number one thing we find is that a lot of people run too fast on their recovery days.  This leads to fatigue, illness, and higher risk of injury. As a pro runner, the best thing I do is run very slow and easy on my recovery days. Andrew started relaxing and enjoying his easy miles, getting faster by understanding that the hard days should be hard, and the easy days should be easy helped him qualify for Boston and crush his goals.
• 
  Major milestone:
• Setting an all time PR and qualifying for Boston for the first time fifteen years after I ran my first marathon!
• What is the secret to your success?
  I've been running marathons since I was 19 back in 2003. Still, I'd never qualified for Boston and thought my training had plateaued. The Runcoach program helped me gradually add weekly mileage in a sustainable way that helped keep me injury free. The speed and tempo sessions throughout the program helped me sustain my ability to run at a race pace onto of the mileage I was building.
  
• What is the biggest obstacle to reaching your goals and how do you get over it?
  I'd used other training programs and had injuries that disrupted my training (plantar fasciitis). Runcoach helped in that many of the runs were slightly slower than I thought I need. The steady accumulation of miles ended up being much more meaningful than the focus I had on just pace alone.
  
• What is the most rewarding part of training?
  I set not one but two personal records this year- 3:14 at the San Francisco Marathon then 3:02 at California International. There's no feeling like maintaining and even increasing your pace in the last six miles of the marathon.
• What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
  Other running communities such as Strava helped me find people with similar running goals so I could follow their training and ask them questions as I went through the program.
• Anything else you would like to share?
  I considered five or six other training programs before I settled on Runcoach. I have a wife and a young daughter (18 months) who also have very busy schedules! In addition to liking the training itself, I really liked that if my weekly schedule had to change, I could make a few quick adjustments in the app and get a new training calendar generated (as opposed to editing dozens of upcoming sessions in iCalendar).
• What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
  I really like the app. It does seem to double upload many of my Strava runs, however, so I have to delete them. Annoying!

Major milestone:
Completing my first marathon!

What is the secret to your success?
Consistency, Runcoach app, and the support of friends and family.

What is the most rewarding part of training?
The most rewarding part for me was seeing how each week I was hitting new distances and new times.

What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
Stay consistent with your training, don't let a bad training day ruin other days, and just keep going.

What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
The app was great for my training, It helped keep me consistent and really helped me stay on track towards my goal. The speed and threshold workouts were great.

• We learn from David 's story that positive self talk is essential to success. That goals take time and diligent effort. That the support of a coach can help you achieve your goals. This newbie-to-running shares his journey training for his first marathon. 
  
  Major milestone:
  I have two that, to me, I would see as my biggest milestones. Loosing weight, and in my first year of running, I am proud to say I completed my first marathon in Dublin, Ireland.
• What is the secret to your success?
  I find the secret to my success is creating a balance to my daily and weekly life. I set a weekly plan based on my work schedule and how I will spend my time on days off. Training for races and what types of training I do both in the gym and outside of the gym. I also set myself weekly/monthly goals that I aim to achieve and how I aim to achieve these goals over time.
• What is the biggest obstacle to reaching your goals and how do you get over it?
  I find that one of my biggest obstacles is training alone, I tend to do my training alone. I do plan on joining a local running club soon. I have noticed it is great to run with others and it can be great motivation for not just yourself but others too.
• What is the most rewarding part of training?
  I can be honest and say in the past year I never realised how much stronger I could become both physically and mentally. I become more positive and driven to achieve your goals.
• What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
  The best advice I can give is don’t be afraid to talk to others in the community, and the trainers from Runcoach are always happy to give some great advice. Always remember to tell yourself "I can and I will" and instead of saying to yourself one day I will do this and that, you allow yourself to say "today I will achieve my targets I set out for myself".
• Anything else you would like to share?
  I find the support from the coaches here is amazing. They are so easy to talk to and share your progress with. A huge thank you to everyone at Runcoach who have supported my training and my progress.
• What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
  I think one of the great things about Runcoach is not only the support and advice they offer personally, but their posts on Instagram can be very inspiring too.

Uma is a story if inspiration. She shares the importance of consistency in training, and how following a training plan can help everyone remain accountable in the pursuit of their goals. But most importantly, Uma shares the benefit of the coach-athlete relationship and we at Runcoach are grateful for all of the runners we get to support.

What is the most rewarding part of training?
Self awareness - Realizing that I am stronger than I thought - physically and mentally.

What advice would you give to other members of the Runcoach community?
Stick to the schedule that the Runcoach app gives you. Report back to the coaches via email. It creates a commitment. Don't skip out on speed work. It was very challenging for me, and I had no track nearby where I felt safe to train alone in the dark hours of the morning. I tried to get in as many speed workouts as I could and that helped a lot to improve my pace.

Anything else you would like to share?
I would like to say that the timely encouragement from Coach Cawood and Coach Hiruni went a very long way to help me PR my race. I felt like they were my personal coaches. During a difficult phase during the race, when I wanted to walk the bridge, I told myself that I would not let Coach Cawood and Coach Hiruni down, I would run that bridge. And I did it!

What feedback would you offer on the Runcoach experience?
The overall experience was very awesome. I will do it again. The app needs some upgrades. For tempo workouts, I reported warm up, cool down, drills+strides, speed run and cool down separately so coaches could see my pace, but the app did not total them correctly. So I had to delete all of that and enter one aggregate number which did not show the effort I put into the workout.


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