Saucony Cambridge
Half Marathon
Training Tips provided by the Official Club of the Cambridge Half Marathon
- Cambridge & Coleridge

Early Tips pre Christmas

Running a half marathon is a tough challenge but one that most people who are fit and well-prepared can manage. It doesn't compare with a marathon, and is much easier on your body, but like a marathon you need to build up your preparation slowly and not take on too much too soon.

If you start with a great bound of enthusiasm and train heavily the likelihood of picking up an injury is very high. You won't be doing your body any good and you may finish up being unable to run the half marathon.

For the Cambridge half, training in earnest needs to start after Christmas. Up until then, it's important to get yourself ready for the harder training. If you're already running regularly you should just continue; if you haven't run much before, but you're basically fit and about the right weight, begin by running for maybe half an hour twice a week, build this up to easy running for half an hour three times a week and try to vary your route and the surface you run on.

Don't do more than this at this stage and don't try to run fast all the time. If you can handle it and enjoy it, it's a good feeling to run fast for part of one or two of the runs but always make sure the last five minutes are run slowly and make the majority of your running at a pace you can manage easily. The hard training starts in January!

Warm Up & Cool Down

You should also ensure you warm up and cool down properly. Ideally this involves some dynamic stretching for ten minutes before you set off on a run and static stretching, particularly for all the leg muscles, after you have finished. Guidance is given on the RunBritain web site which is the site set up for road runners by the national governing body for athletics. There are lots of useful tips and clues there.

More tips on training for the Cambridge half will be put up here after Christmas. In the meantime, if you're local to Cambridge and want to join a group of like-minded people of all standards, have a look at the C&C web site - we're your local club and we can offer coaching and a friendly training group.

About Cambridge & Coleridge

C&C was founded in 1961 from a merger of two clubs, Cambridge City Athletic Club and Coleridge Athletic Club. (Coleridge is a district of Cambridge.) It has been C&C ever since.

We have over 600 members around 520 of whom are active competitively. Just under 60% of the club's membership is young athletes, under 18 years old. Of the remainder nearly 200 focus on road running and other endurance events such as cross country and fell running. (Yes, fell running, there may be no fells anywhere near Cambridge - there aren't even any decent hills anywhere near Cambridge - but we poor flatlanders occasionally take to the fells and have occasionally been know to perform moderately well.)

In 2008 we began to set up a number of 'community clubs' for youngsters under 10. Members of these clubs are not full members of C&C but many join when they reach 10. Currently we have around 100 young people taking part in the community clubs.

If you would like to know more please go to www.cambridgeandcoleridge.org.uk.