Phillips-Fit

Ian Pledger from Thatcham, trained by Phillips-Fit Personal Trainer Phil Chalmers, used the event as a benchmark to gauge his progress towards his long-term goals.

Late last year he achieved 1hr 44min & 1hr 43min in the Marlow & Henley Half Marathons respectively and was looking to better those in the Wokingham equivalent, held on Sunday 11th February.

After the snow of the previous week, the conditions were favourable & the race started with a number of vary high calibre athletes (the winner posted a time inside 1hr 05mins!). Ian's race went very much to plan & he battled hard at the end to finish with a very impressive time of 1hr 40min 19sec, some 3 mins inside his personal best. The result was a tribute to his dedicated training both in his PT sessions & his solo running since Christmas.

He's now looking towards the Reading Half in March, & the Abingdon full marathon & Henley & Marlow Halfs later in the year, aiming for ever quicker times. On this performance he's well on course to achieve his long-term goals. Well done Ian.

Well done Helen Lodge from Wokingham, for completing her first Half Marathon and first ever race! She started training for the event with Phillips-Fit Personal Trainer, Ryan Phillips in November 2006 and after 14 weeks of following a personalized running programme designed to increase the distance she could run, her fitness had improved dramatically which enabled her to run much faster and further.

Her programme required her to run 4 times per week and her longest run was 17km. Her average weekly mileage over the 14 weeks was 36km/week (22.6 miles/week).

Helen had a slight setback in the beginning when she suffered from pain in her left hip. After working on improving her running technique and investing in some specialized running shoes, the aches and pains subsided which allowed her to focus 100% on her goal.

Helen completed the race in 2hr 13mins which was 7mins faster than her predicted best time! Helen appears to have "the bug" now and is already looking at other events in the near future. Using this race as a benchmark, Helen hopes to beat her time at the next race. Watch this space....