Michelle Martinez of Trailblazers Run Coaching took her group to Noosa: Here’s her recap of a wonderful few days!

15 super keen and excited runners arrived in Noosa on the Friday afternoon keen to get in some good training and have a whole lot of fun!

Our first training run was an 11km trail run through the beautiful Noosa National park, sticking to the sandy single tracks, and around 250m of elevation. Amazing coastal views and quiet forest trails defiantly the highlights.

The Trailblazers gang all headed out for dinner that night, during which a team meeting revealed some of the fun training runs they were to look forward to and the team challenges that await them!

Saturday morning the group headed to Tewantin, where the focus was again, single trails. Such a beautiful park to run in, full of dense rainforest trails, and lots of challenges!!! Several runners learnt a few downhill and single trail running techniques to help them navigate the tricky tracks with more confidence. This run covered between 10-15km, depending on the runner’s ability.

Back at Noosa for a relaxing lunch, we were extremely lucky to welcome our guest speaker, Benita Willis, World Cross Country champion and 4 x Olympian. Benita spoke candidly about her amazing career and many training and racing experiences. An open chat session with the group, certainly the highlight of the weekend!!!!

Saturday afternoon we headed to a local park for a challenging strength session. Our PT certainly gave everyone a fantastic workout, with plenty of lunges, squats, push ups, burpees, more running, all in pairs, to provide that ultimate team challenge. We discussed the importance of strength training for runners, and that how running more is not necessarily best (quality over quantity).

Sunday morning provided the group an opportunity to work on their endurance. We headed out via the National Park, and covered several kilometres of sand running along the beach. The longer group ran a total of 30km, including 14km of beach, while the rest of the group managed an amazing 23km, with 6km of beach. This session was a great opportunity for the group to work on their nutrition and hydration in preparation for future events.

A delicious, healthy lunch was provided at the apartments, and while we recovered from our big morning run, Andrew from At One Foods joined us to chat about their wonderful, nutritious sports bars. We had an open group discussion on general training and race day nutrition, providing the group with plenty of ideas to try during their training!

A super fun team challenge was on the agenda on Sunday afternoon. This was more like an adult treasure hunt, where teams had to find and collect different items, take team photos while completing various challenges, all within a time frame. The winning team earnt themselves free dinner at the Surf Club!!!

Our final training session was on Monday morning. We headed into into Hastings street, found ourselves plenty of stairs, and ran for 45 minutes. This was defiantly a tough session, but the perfect way to finish off 4 days of solid training and a whole heap of fun!!!

If I had told the group they were to run stairs, after an endurance run, and 4 other sessions over 4 days, they would have seriously doubted their ability to complete it. Our runners never cease to amaze me how strong they can be, when they are put to the challenge! Of course, we all say we are crazy, but we wouldnt want it any other way!!!