Andrew’s story will feel familiar to a lot of runners. Years of enthusiasm, big goals and hard training have resulted in a steady background noise of fatigue and injuries. What Andrew has changed over the years isn’t talent or motivation, but his approach to training.

By committing to a few simple principles — most importantly consistency — Andrew has shifted from a classic boom-and-bust cycle to running year after year with confidence, enjoyment, and far fewer setbacks. At 65, he’s not chasing shortcuts or miracle fixes — just stacking sensible weeks, doing the basics well, and letting the long-term results take care of themselves.

A little while back Mark put a ‘runners training profile’ quiz online and I was a little excited to score 94%, excited partly because am a runner of only 5 years experience and partly because I am now 65 years old and validation of sporting achievement is always welcome at that age!

I received the following comment generated by the quiz:

“You’ve clearly built a smart training foundation and understand how to listen to your body. You’re managing your recovery, sleep, and strength work — all the things that most runners skip.”

I hastened to let Mark know that this was very true of my running at the moment but in my relatively short running journey I have made many, many mistakes in all of the areas mentioned. And it has taken me many years to get to a balanced and well thought out place with running.

Before the Covid lockdowns shut all the pools and gyms in the 2020s I was actually a swimmer. Not a great one mind you, but swimming rewards hard work and consistency and I could do that. I swam for several years with a triathlete swimming squad in the Atmosphere Gym, coached by James Sweeney. I swam 3 sessions per week with each session 4.2 to 4.6 kms. Looking back, this established some decent aerobic capacity that has most definitely helped with running, while the structured sessions, hard work and competitiveness also helped.

When the gyms and pools closed in the lockdowns I took up running the roads with great enthusiasm and little skill. I blundered my way through the usual pitfalls of overtraining, injury, under fuelling, lack of adequate rest etc etc that I am grateful to have left behind me for the most part. Despite the mistakes, I managed to have a great time and ran in some great events. I ran the Panorama Punish twice, (once with my daughter), slowly accumulated 150 Parkruns, ran in the Saints and Sinners at St Columba’s College, ran the Mudgee Half Marathon, ran the Rock and Run Half Marathon,  ran the Sydney Half Marathon twice and also ran the Sydney Marathon twice. I was having a great time!

But there were some areas that demanded some closer attention during this time and I slowly but surely chipped away at these areas:

  1. Consistency. For some time I went through the ‘boom and bust’ cycle of training too hard, getting injured, not running, training too hard again, getting injured. Over and over. I landed several times in Mark’s clinic up in Wentworth Falls with injuries. So this I have turned around: I ran 3,000kms in 2024 and I am just about to clock up 3,000kms in 2025. Not always the best kilometres, but I got it done. I have some niggles from time to time but nothing major. Mark aways spoke about how people over estimate what they can accomplish in the short term and under estimate what they can accomplish in the long term. This is my long term investment.

  2. Strength. The best purchase of my life was buying Mark’s kettlebell workout a few years ago after Mark demonstrated some of the exercises in his clinic. I have been working on this set of exercises regularly for a few years now, twice a week, and this has made a huge difference. I still swim once a week and pull buoy and paddles take care of upper body strength. I only swim this single session with a total of 2.5 kms but it is enough to keep my upper body strong.
  1. Rest. In one of my sessions at Mark’s Physio clinic Mark mentioned Matthew Walker and his book on sleep. I read the book, acknowledged that there has been some controversy about it, and investigated sleep and rest quite deeply. I made made many changes in my sleep habits and I am sleeping better now than I ever have. Also as a trained Yoga teacher in the Satyananda tradition I went back to the daily practice of Yoga Nidra, a deep relaxation practice which has been very, very helpful in me being able to get the rest required by runners.

  2. Nutrition and Hydration. My first big race was the Mudgee Half Marathon and I will never forget getting across the line with legs starting to go to jelly and not being sure if I was going to vomit or faint. Or some indescribable combination of the two! For me a road Half Marathon will usually involve about 2 hours on my feet and for this race I was badly down on any form of nutritional preparation or hydration. This has changed now due mostly to Tamara Madden’s articles and videos on Streek. I am still using my long runs to experiment with nutrition and hydration and I finally have a formula that works for me! For what its worth: peanut butter and jam sandwich before long run / race plus warm water. Cliff bar/s in the early part of the run, Gu chews for the middle and SIS Blackcurrent gels for the remainder. My stomach slowly becomes less amenable to solids as the run gets longer. Water as available and sodium caps.

  3. Heart Rate Training. So this for me has been a more recent development. When Strava recently introduced the ability to see your heart rate zones plotted over various time periods I was horrified to see what I should have seen before. I was rarely running in Zone 2 and consistently thrashing away for years on Zones 4-5. And bearing in mind my max heart rate is about 195bpm this meant I have spent a huge amount of time running with a HR over 180 in normal training. This has now changed and I am now achieving 80% per week in Zones 1-2 and my body is thankful. I am a fan of running technology so I invested in a Coros armband and this has kept me honest.

So the result of Mark’s ‘runners training profile’ quiz confirmed that I was on the right track, and I have been slowly moving towards this for some years now. I tend to learn best from my own mistakes rather than listening to sound advice, something I have also been working on!

Thanks again Mark for Streek, and all I have learned from it, as well as the many snippets of information I have picked up from you in person over the years!