TEST FORM IN JUST 30MINS

Use parkruns to test form and accurately guide pacing in weekly sessions

Head to your local parkrun to guage current fitness levels

Before starting any journey, you need to know where you are – and training is no different. It’s crucial to know where your fitness is right now so you can map out training over the coming months. Too many athletes avoid testing ‘until they feel fit’, but this mentality will leave you guessing what training will work best for you.

All you need is an easily accessible, affordable, regular, standardised measurement – handily, your local parkrun provides all these things… plus people to run with.

Building a parkrun time trial into your training every 4-8 weeks will allow you to calculate an accurate race/threshold pace or heart rate, which you can then use to ensure all your training sessions are at the right intensity.

It’s important to control as many of the variables as you can, so make sure you change as little as possible from test to test. Most people also skip a good warm-up, so use the structure here and keep it the same every time.