Mid Run Chat with Amy & Suzie

This week, both of us are sidelined  Amy with plantar fasciitis, Suzie with a grumpy knee. So we’re diving into the messy, unglamorous reality of being injured runners. We talk through the symptoms, the rehab routines that are helping, and how we’re approaching the slow, steady return to running. Suzie shares the head‑over‑heart decision to defer her London Marathon place &what it felt like watching from the sidelines as Sebastian Sawe rewrote history with his 1.59.30 record run.  We get into whether performances like that are simply “too good to be true” or a sign of how far super shoes, nutrition, and smarter training have pushed the sport. We also reflect on what likely caused our own injuries and what we’ll change next time: looking at technique to spot weak links, fixing imbalances before they become problems, and why simple plyometrics might be the most underrated injury‑prevention tool out there. Is skipping and hopping genuinely the way forward? It’s an honest conversation about frustration, patience, and learning to train with a bit more wisdom than ego.

It's been a busy week with Amy and Suzie experiencing the two contrasting ends of the training and racing spectrum.  Amy surprises herself by putting herself on a start line with no grand plan and ends up racing the people around her rather than her watch. A 36:23 10K later, she’s left wondering how far you can go when you stop micromanaging pace and just get on with racing.# Suzie’s marathon build, meanwhile, hits an obstacle. A sharp knee pain mid‑mountain‑day forces her to pause, reassess, and return to the one rule past injuries have made non‑negotiable: take it one day at a time. We were both jumping up and down on Sunday watching the World Indoor Championships and Britain’s middle‑distance gold medals. Both Suzie and Amy are big fans of Coaches Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter and discuss what makes them and the athletes they coach Gold Medal winners. 

Suzie kicks things off with her weekly hot‑cross‑bun fuelling fail — the one that left her shivering at a bus stop and panic‑buying an £8 fleece just to survive the journey home. Meanwhile, Amy reveals the diet that shocked her physio and completely flipped her shopping habits on their head. Together, they dive into how their pre‑session rituals, mid‑run gel choices, and post‑session recovery favourites have evolved as they’ve grown into marathon runners — and how none of it has been linear, tidy, or what the textbooks promised. They unpack years of nutrition curiosity: falling down the paleo rabbit hole, dabbling in high‑fat phases, experimenting with vegetarian and vegan eating, and eventually emerging as two runners now obsessed with getting all the carbs in. Training has changed. Their bodies have changed. And their food — thankfully — has changed with them. This episode is honest, funny, and full of the kind of real‑world fuelling lessons you only learn the hard way. 📩How to contact us? Amy: [email protected]  Suzie: [email protected] Find us on Instagram: Suzie_Richards Amyfryrunning      

Rest over rated or essential ? Why do so many coaching books — from Jack Daniels to Arthur Lydiard — barely mention it? Is it the mindset that a coach’s job is to fill every day with training? Or the old belief that a good night’s sleep is enough recovery to go again? Suzie and Amy sit down after a weekend of racing — Amy taking the win at her local cross‑country (with the kids collecting medals too), and Suzie finishing 2nd at the local fell race that doubled up as the  Welsh Short Fell Race Championships. Amy also shares a surprising update on her back issues and a twist she didn’t see coming. From there, they dive into the big conversation the running world avoids: rest. They unpack the booming “recovery industry” of boots, guns, rollers and cold plunges, and contrast it with what the evidence actually supports: sleep, fuelling, mobility, meditation, and lowering cortisol in small, meaningful bursts throughout the day. Suzie and Amy explore what training really does to the body — not just the legs, but the immune system, major organs (especially the heart), hormones, glycogen stores, and inflammation. They talk honestly about burnout, breakdown, and why the body can only repair through genuine rest. They also open up about the psychological side of recovery: the guilt, the fear of losing fitness, the identity tied to “always training”, and the mental fatigue that builds when you never stop. And in their most personal stories yet, Amy shares the reality of five stress fractures in five years, and Suzie reflects on the overuse hip injuries that ended her triathlon career — both rooted in not valuing rest when they needed it most. They close with a bigger question: Are we chasing short‑term PBs and race calendars at the expense of long‑term health — especially heart health? And what would it look like to take the cautious, sustainable, athlete‑for‑life approach instead? This episode is a reminder that rest isn’t optional — it’s where the training actually works. 📩How to contact us? Amy: [email protected] Suzie: [email protected]

Episode 3: Data — Your Best Friend or Your Worst Coach? Amy and Suzie dive straight into the big question: Is all this running data actually helping us… or quietly wrecking our training?   Suzie opens with a brutally honest debrief from the Sheep Tracks Fell Race — yes, she won the Champion Ewe trophy, but also ran herself straight into a fatigue crater thanks to fuelling mistakes and a marathon session days before. Meanwhile, Amy’s week has been peak real‑life chaos: three kids with head lice, an ill cat, and her husband working away. Suzie wasn’t far behind, breaking down on the M56. Training still happened — not perfectly, not scientifically — but in the messy, flexible way that represents real life. They unpack the gut‑health and fuelling webinar they both attended, then get into the real heart of the episode: data that helps vs. data that hijacks your training.   Heart rate gets a shout‑out as one of the few tools that can genuinely reign you in — stopping every run drifting into the grey zone, keeping easy runs actually easy, and preventing threshold sessions from tipping over LT2 into “ego pace”. They break down training zones without the lab‑coat energy: why beginners don’t need to overthink it, why Suzie now prefers a simple three‑zone model, and how LT1 and LT2 can guide smarter sessions without becoming another stick to beat yourself with. They also talk about useful benchmark tests that don’t require a physiology lab: a hard parkrun as a 5K effort check‑in, and the classic MAF test (180 minus age) for a 30‑minute aerobic baseline.   And Amy lands the final punch: are we running well… or are we just running to produce good data?   📩How to contact us? Amy: [email protected] Suzie: [email protected]

Suzie and Amy kick off 2026 with a brutally honest catch-up: creaky bodies, acupuncture experiments, osteopath verdicts, and the reality of running through midlife. But this isn’t just a chat about aches — it’s a deep dive into how our definitions of success and consistency have radically shifted since our Loughborough Uni days. Back then, ticking every box on the training plan was the gold standard. Now? We’re asking better questions: Are we sleeping well? Recovering properly? Showing up as thoughtful athletes, mums, partners, and humans? From triathlon racing to post-kids perspective, we explore how time off, life experience, and a few injuries have taught us that missing a run doesn’t mean missing the point. Click play for honesty, laughter, and a fresh take on what it means to train well — 20 years on.

How many races can you really fit into a year without blowing up your marathon training? This week, we discuss planning a race calendar, the temptation to over‑commit, and how what a realistic season may look like when you want strong training blocks and personal bests. Suzie & Amy look at their race planning and what they have learnt across the years.