Ready to RUN this winter?

What the running programme includes

• A plan that is yours — built around the race you choose from our calendar, your current mileage and the time you actually have.
• Two coached runs a week — 6 am on Tuesday and Thursday, from Nirvana Country, Sector 50, Gurugram — or live online from anywhere.
• A customised strength training programme — a three-month programme written for you after your assessment, to do at a gym or at home, from week one.
• Race preparation — taper, pacing plan and race-day fuelling for the distance you have entered.
• Treadmill or road, your choice — every session in the plan comes with a pace and, for the treadmill, an incline — so you can run the whole programme at your gym or at home and still be coached the same way.

Why train for it, rather than just turn up?

• Your legs adapt slower than your lungs — fitness comes in weeks; bones and tendons take months to toughen. That gap is why untrained runners feel fine at 10 km and break down at 25. Twelve weeks closes it.
• Too much, too soon is the injury — in studies of new runners, a sudden jump in weekly distance is the most consistent predictor of getting hurt. A coached build controls the ramp. What actually prevents running injuries.
• Running out of fuel is a training problem — long runs and practised fuelling teach the body to burn more fat and take in carbohydrate on the move, so the last kilometres are run, not survived.
• Your heart deserves a build-up — serious cardiac events in road races are rare, well under one per 100,000 finishers, but they cluster in the final kilometres. Gradual training and an honest health check at the first conversation are how that risk is managed. Who should not run.

Twelve weeks, three phases

• Weeks 1–5 — build the base. Easy volume, the long run grows a little at a time.
• Weeks 6–9 — get specific. Goal-pace blocks in the long run, threshold sessions, fuelling practised.
• Weeks 10–12 — sharpen and taper. Volume drops, intensity does not.

Is the running programme for you?

• Not running at all yet? That is fine, on one condition: you are committed to starting now. The coach starts you with walk-run and sets a winter target that is honest for you — a 5K or a 10K rather than the half.
• Already running? If you can manage 30 minutes and give three to four sessions a week, the half marathon is on the table.
• You must be 18 or over.
• Not yet if you have a heart, kidney or metabolic condition you have not discussed with a doctor, chest pain or unusual breathlessness on exertion, or an injury that has not been assessed. Read who should not run.