The 10k Training That Put Me In Hospital! + BONUS free 10k Training Plans!

I don't generally comment on videos, but I wanted to recognise how honest and open you were in your video. Keep up the great videos and importantly, look after yourself.

This reflects most of my training as a young athlete. We never had much guidance into incorporating easy running into our training plans and instead had a toxic rhetoric of "never leaving anything on the road". One of my coaches gave me Emil Zatopek's biography to read which reinforced the message that training should always be brutal and hard and to keep pushing even when we were sick. I remember we would even run our warm ups and cool downs pretty much all out! All of this inevitably ended up in me being ill or injured the majority of the time and sapped my enjoyment for the sport. Thankfully, as an adult I now understand the importance of "easy" running actually being easy and regained my love for the sport!!

To talk so openly and honestly about this is very brave and shows how much of a different place you are now in which is definitely something to celebrate. It really resonated with me as I have been in a similar place but equally now enjoy the slow paced runs, eating as fuel to keep me running and enjoying all that being happy and healthy brings. I am sure you will be the much needed therapy for a fair few ladies/women out there who find themselves in a dark place so thank you and please keep making these videos!

Love the video and the honesty, Phily - not to mention the training plans, thank you! I’m not quite the runner you are (read: not nearly at all, but every stride is progress!), but I DID have to take a week off of weightlifting recently due to my own chest / cough illness, and I can totally relate to that mind-body disconnect where your body is saying “we need rest!” while your brain is yelling “we need to be training!” 😅

Your videos are incredible - love the raw conversational style and charisma you have, and the insight into an elite athlete is very educational too!

Not that I was then, or have been ever since then, an elite athlete, but I can relate so much to what you described in this video, and it really makes me want to buy your 2018-self a nice, relaxing tea or coffee and give her a hug if she'd be OK with that. That's what I now wish someone had done for me at the time when I was in a pretty bad place and struggling so much with my eating disorder, and I was pushing through all the stress and hard work at uni and in my jobs. Really impressive what you were able to achieve despite not being well, and thank you so much for these training plans! I will give the intermediate 10k plan a try, am not quite at the weekly volume in terms of miles you recommend but am running consistently for 5 times a week and for similar times as the plan prescribes. My easy pace is just very slow :D, so I don't accumulate as many miles over the week even though I run for a similar amount of time.

I've heard those types of consistent steady runs being described as "grey area" training, and I had a bad habit of doing that before too. It gets you fit very quickly, but eventually, something's gotta give because your HR average is way too high all the time and you're just bound to get injured unless you're hella durable. Instead of running like 6:40-7:00 on "ez" days, I'll go as slow as 8:20+ post-workout/longrun if it means letting my body recovery properly. Glad to hear you're alright through everything though, my dude.

Okay, week 6, contract a chest infection, got it 😅 but oof, I'm so sorry you were suffering and glad you're doing better now. I know it takes hard work to unlearn those habits. I really appreciate your approach to rest and recovery—it comes through in all the videos.

OMG! Scary stuff! I'm glad you came through it and "got smart". When I was young (16 to 20), I was the same way...always pushing it, and still running when I was sick. When we're young we think we're invincible...and we're not.

As someone who likes numbers and seeing how elite athletes train, this was a fascinating insight! I love how you actually wrote down all the sessions and times, which seems much more personal than just uploading to Strava, and is perhaps something I'll start doing for 2023. Is that something you still do? It's very interesting to see how the fast times came from the unsustainable training period - it's easy to see how you can fall into that routine when you're 'rewarded' with fast times, at least in the short term. I know I used to get concerned if a flat run averaged more than 8 mins a mile, whereas now I've realised that if I'm recovering or am genuinely going for easy pace, that's actually what I need to be targeting - unsurprisingly this year having made that mental improvement (among others) I've knocked 43 seconds off my 5k time. It would be great to hear you talk more about the mental side of running and how parts of it can be unhealthy - it's a topic which is still often covered up but is so important! Out of interest, given the mistakes that you acknowledge making during that training period, why do you think that race still stands as your 10k PB 4 years later? I know you set PB's at lots of other distances this year, and so am surprised you didn't for 10k. Then again, 10k is the one distance (5k+) that I've never raced so what do I know 😂 Perhaps I'll have to find one to train for and use your plan, that looks great, especially with the detail you've put into it. Love the grind!

What a crazy story! It's a good reminder that sometimes even when we do everything wrong, we still get the results we wanted, which is scary because it delays when you learn your lesson and adopt better training practices. I'm a big believer in learning through your mistakes. Sometimes you just know something is wrong theoretically, but you have to wait until you actually get burned to learn the lesson! I'm sure your hospital visit was a bit of a wake up moment, or how long after this did it take you to realize that this was not the right way to train?

Holy shit dude. I kinda feel bad that I think I commented on a previous video that I like the run just after getting over a cold because I feel like it helps push it out, but you DEFINITELY have to be on the mend and over the cold before you can do that, which I guess you learned the hard way. That's pretty crazy that you stuck with it, I'm glad you came out of it okay!

As a casual runner(not elite) I took allot from this vlog thanks for sharing,may I say you have a good aura ☺️ keep up the good work 👍🏻

Thank you for sharing! I’ve found that when I started running, I thought that I needed to run through sickness and/or injury. Wake up calls are so hard, but so good!

It must have been scary for the people around you at the time. Relieved you're in a much better place in 2022 👍🏻

Great insight phily and also Strava and other apps all good but people who use diary to log their routine training are the people I worship. From now on I will start using diary to log my runs, It gives cult runner vibes. Total nerd stuff.

That's a great lesson for us all - sadly most of us don't really learn from other's mistakes very well. I'm 1 year old, running age, and I've been looking at what to do for my next 10k plan. I've done the Garmin ones before and just completed a Half plan and raced my first half last Sunday. I'll give the intermediate plan a go starting after the Knutsford 10k on the 16th - seeing if I can beat my 50:41 PB. Thanks for putting these plans out there :)

Love the content & honesty 👌🏽 good to know that you were monitoring the wind back in 2018 too 🤣🤣👍🏼

So good to see you're in such a better place now, and that you're bring all of us with you for the ride.

Hi Phily! When I first started watching your videos you felt oddly familiar to me. After watching this video, I know why! I was at WT on the women's cross country team when you came to visit your then boyfriend in Texas. You were there when I ran my first 10K on the track. I love your approach and mentality towards running and training! You are very inspiring!