![]() |
Jane Mepham after her half marathon run inTexas, USA |
I am forever grateful to all the runners who have entrusted me with their running goals, and it gives me so much pleasure when I get positive feedback out of my online coaching.
Here is an elaborate review from one of my favorite runners as she looks back at the six month's journey of her training with me.
Jane Mepham is the founder and owner of Elgon Financial Advisors – an independent virtual Financial Planning Firm that serves First-Generation Americans and Immigrants based in Austin Texas and one of my online students.
Running
Background
I ran track
in high school (middle distance races), but switched to Tennis at age 16 and
figured this was going to be my lifelong sport.
Fast forward
to a couple years ago, I developed tendinitis in my right elbow (Tennis elbow),
which made hitting a tennis ball extremely painful. After consulting with a lot
of doctors and folks in the tennis community, I came to the painful conclusion
that I had to stop playing tennis for a while to give my elbow a chance to
heal, and that’s when I turned to running.
At this point my goal was simply to get out, get some exercise and use
running as a way to stay healthy. Even though I’d run track in high school, the
only competitive road racing I had taken part in was a 5k at my local church
way back in 2012. I was pretty ignorant about running and I honestly never
thought I would take part in a race. As
happens with a lot of things in life, one of my friends convinced me to sign up
for my first half marathon (3M in Austin Tx) in early 2018 which got me
training harder. I had no clue what I
was doing, so my training was literally just to go out and run a couple times a
week with some gym workouts thrown in for good measure.
I surprised
myself when I finished the race in under 2 hours (8.55 min / mile pace).
But it took me almost two weeks to fully recover. That same year I started running with a small
group, and the difference was amazing in terms of overall improvement. I ran
the same race in 2019 and this time finished in what is now my PB - 01:39:41
(07:37 min /mile pace), which got me into the top 10 in my age group. I
continued running with the same group, and our training consisted of what we
jokingly called the neighborhood run (5-7 miles) on Tuesday, a track workout on
Thursday and a long run on Saturdays ( 9 to 13 ish miles). Some folks in the
group would do more than the 3 days, and those training for a marathon would do
longer longs on Saturday. In addition, we all incorporated other workouts on
our own.
Big Goals
That year I decided to up my game. I set up a goal to complete a full marathon and qualify for the Boston Marathon at the same time. I picked out my qualifying race for early 2020, but my training was not very organized (What you don’t know can actually come back to bite you) and I had to severely cut down due to painful knees and a few other injuries, that just seemed to crop up every now and again. By the time Jan 2020 came around I knew there was no way I was going to be able to complete run the targeted Marathon in March/April of 2020, but I still run my favorite race – and surprised myself by finishing the race in 01:42:32 (7:49 min /mile). I was just glad to finish it.
Online
Coaching with Justin
By then as
you can tell, I was fully hooked onto long distance running and was constantly
looking for ways to improve. I figured that if I was to improve, I needed to
see what guys like Eliud Kipchoge, Rudisha and some of the folks in Iten were doing.
Based on everything I knew and my background as a tennis a coach, I knew hard
work is the key, but it was also important to find the right program and
hopefully avoid the injuries, that seemed to be derailing my progress. With the
Corona virus lockdown, I could not run with my group anymore and so really
needed to find something that would keep me going. In my search for an online
coach, I came across Justin Lagat, and after reading his blog, I reached out to
him to see if we could work together. I loved that he’d grown up and trained in
that environment, had interacted with some of these elite guys, had worked with
some of the same coaches in the same environment and had a PB of 02:26, after
cutting of 29 minutes from a prior run. My logic was very simple, Kenyans are
the best at long distance running, to be the best you need to train like them.
I shared my goals with him
1)
Improve my half marathon time - Run under 01:30 (under 07:00 min /mile pace)
2) Run my first marathon and qualify for Boston marathon at the same time – For 2021 (This might change), I would need to run in under 03:45:00 (appx 08:37 min /mile pace) for my age group.