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After Paula Radcliffe’s searing victory at this weekend’s Great South Run, turning on the heat in a cold, wet and windy Portsmouth, the question is: how will Paula do in next week’s biggie, the New York City Marathon?

First of all, is she fit? A fully-fit Radcliffe is, on paper, a favourite to win pretty much any race of 10 miles and upwards. Very few athletes have the capacity to throw in a 4.57 mile early on in a race and not crash and burn afterwards (winning in New York a year ago, mile 2 went by in 4.59!). And it looks very much as though the weather, not her fitness, prevented her from breaking Lornah Kiplagat’s world best over the 10-mile distance.

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In the first of this series on speed I looked at one of the basic requirements: how much force you apply to the ground. Now it’s time to expand a little on how to get stronger without getting heavier, and how weight loss can play a part in improving your distance running.

In a nutshell, heavy weights lifted for a small number of repetitions will produce strength gains without bulk. And since we’re talking about strength for running, then the range of exercises required is small too. So we’re thinking about doing a small number of exercises - let’s think about two, the deadlift and the squat - for a small number of reps and sets - let’s say 2 x 3-5, with a pretty heavy weight - what would be defined as around 85% of 1RM, or 85% of the most you can lift at one attempt. There, that might be all you need to know. Simple, and effective.

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Do you want to go faster? There’s no catch, no hard sell, say yes if you want to. Oh, so you do. Now, is that ‘I WANT to go faster’ (and will do what it takes), or is that ‘Yes, well I’d quite like to go faster,’ as in ‘I’d quite like to play the saxophone,’ (but can’t really be arsed to practise for an hour a day for the next two years, do exams, perform in front of people and risk humiliation, let alone actually buy a sax.’? Getting faster when you are a novice and intermediate comes naturally. It will happen whether you want it to or not, as long as you run consistently and train with variety, and race fairly regularly. Eventually a runner reaches a plateau, and maybe assumes that that is their speed ceiling. This is where apathy can kick in. It’s all too easy to choose the path of least resistance, and decide to move up a distance in your events: my 10k time has plateau’d, so I’ll start doing half marathons.

If you WANT speed, then you’ll want to have a think about what makes you faster, and then to train those components of your fitness. Put some focused work in. Runnersdaily is going to look at these components over the next few training blogs, and help you work out how to make yourself run faster.

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Variety is the spice of running. Just as running in different types of shoes will challenge and stimulate your biomechanics, so will varying the surfaces you run on. You become more durable, with better lower leg strength and sharper reflexes. A more complete runner, let’s say. Runnersdaily casts a critical eye over what’s out there.

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The above figures are how much diabetes is costing the health services of Northern Ireland and Wales respectively. (I don’t know how the £55,000 per hour was calculated, but if you multiply that by 24 hours in a day, it comes out at well over a million pounds too). Reports by Diabetes UK, and Diabetes UK Cymru claim diabetes is one of the biggest health challenges facing the nation.

Iain Foster, Diabetes UK Northern Ireland director, said: “Diabetes…causes more deaths than breast and prostate cancer combined. But how avoidable is diabetes? Correct diet, correct activity and exercise levels are key, obviously, but how easy is it to know what constitutes ‘correct’?

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After our look at the value, or otherwise of Pilates for runners, Runnersdaily casts its jaundiced eye over yoga as an adjunct to your run training.

The first thing to point out is that there are several styles of yoga. According to the British Wheel of Yoga, there are the ‘classical’ types, which have 11 varieties, and the modern styles, which number seven. That adds up to 18. The best known classical style of yoga, most practised in the west, is ‘hatha’ yoga. That would be the style my nan used to do in the 70s, then. The trendiest style is bikram yoga, which isn’t even on the British Wheel of Yoga’s list, (that makes 19 yogas, then) and which is carried out in a heated room.

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There’s been a lull as summer eases its way out and autumn glides in. The long evenings and bright early mornings are receding and as the air becomes a little brisker each day, we start to reset our sights on a new season of racing. It might be cross-country, it might be a few road 5ks and 10ks as we build towards a spring marathon.

Preparing the mind can be the hard part of race readiness. Physically you might be in great shape yet fail to achieve your goals on race day. Usually that difference between race outcome and the quality of condition you were in as you toed the line is down to mental preparation. So Runnersdaily present 10 tips to help you get more from your fitness on race day.

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I’ve just been rifling through my library of books on coaching, training, running, triathlon, fitness, rehab and linguistics trying to find who advocated the Asian squat as the single best stretching exercise for a runner. And it doesn’t appear to have been Joe Friel, Jack Daniels or Noam Chomsky. No matter.

Take a look at those chaps above, passing the time of day having a nice squat. They happen to be Asian, but people assume this position in Africa, the Americas and Australia too. It’s one of the ways humans have tended to ’sit’ since we evolved. Squatting is a very, very fundamental human movement (especially when having a Movement, which on a good day might be an Olympic Movement…) yet it seems that we westerners sit in the notorious ‘double right-angle’ position rather than squat (both for chatting and for number 2s) to the extent that even as early as the teenage years many people have lost the knack. It has taken several months for some of the teenagers I coach to get down into full squats as seen above.

This is a shame. The position you see above is worth practising and perfecting. Heels flat, by the way, not like the amateur at left of the picture. If you have tight calves, tight hamstrings tight glutes and, sorry or, a tight low back, then this could be the exercise for you. I used to get my inflexible young runners to practise with their backs close to a wall so that they were supported when, as always happened at the beginning, they toppled over backwards.

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To count a few blessings: I’ve got my health, a roof over my head and food in my belly, and when I returned to Wimbledon Common to run the 5k event again, the pervasive smell of dog shit had disappeared. And not only all those things, but I had a shiny new pair of Vibram Fivefingers Sprints to help me get around the 5k course. Life is good, man, life is good.

In a nutshell: one minute and 15 seconds faster than a fortnight ago, which works out at 15 seconds per kilometre. Good, eh?

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It’s always good to have a cynic’s view of something that is widely accepted. The something is Pilates, for runners, and the cynic in question is Dr Mel Siff, a South African academic and athlete who delighted - he died an early death - in questioning the accepted wisdom and exploding the myths of anything to do with training in any form. (And me, too, speaking on his behalf, as someone who is mistrustful of ’systems’).

Pilates is just such an area of fitness. It has an aura and a mystique that seem to give it far greater credibility than it might deserve, considering it is primarily a form of strength training; athletes often mention they’re taking it up, or ask me if it will help them become better runners or triathletes, and the underlying assumption that it will annoys me. There is plenty of received wisdom in the heads of the running community that Pilates ‘gives you an edge’ to quote a commercial ‘Pilates for runners’ website. The same site lists the following benefits:

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