Club Coaching Team
Several club members have a coaching qualification. The current active coaching team is Nikki Fowles, Val Kirby and Max Luff. Nikki is a qualified UK Athletics Coach, which enables her to coach both adults and young children. She focuses on the club’s faster groups. Val, the coaching co-ordinator, and Max have both completed England Athletics Coach in Running Fitness (CiRF) course. They focus on the club’s steady and medium runners. We currently have another aspiring coach: Keith Waters, who plans to complete the course later in 2023.
England Athletics describes the CiRF Award as ‘the cornerstone of the off-track pathway and is designed for those who want to get involved in coaching runners, over the age of 12, who take part in non-track based activities e.g. road, fell, cross country or multi terrain events, and who wish to improve their fitness.’
Our coaching team is there to help all our members, however long you have been running and whatever your aims and ambitions. Nikki works with the fast group, and Val with the steady and medium groups. The coaches prepare training plans, usually in 8 week blocks. Each block focuses on a specific distance such as 10k and Half Marathon. If any club member wants to know more about the training plans, or wants personal training advice, they should contact Nikki (social@cotswoldallrunners.club ) or Val / Max (coaching@cotswoldallrunners.club).
You can see the annual Training Plan for Steady and Medium Runners and the programme for the current training block on our Intervals Page.
Group Leaders
Alongside the coaching team we have a number of group leaders. All these people have gained England Athletics’ Leader in Running Fitness Award (LiRF). The current leaders are Angie Ayling, Sophie Berry, Lisa Christen, Tina Cutler, Anne-Marie Delrosa, Max Luff, Tara Lupton, Jennie Marshall, David Michael, Jamie Osborne, Mick Playle, John Rooney, Julia Ruggles, Marcia Thompson, Gavin Townsend, Jenny Vallely and Keith Waters. The club is always looking for new leaders: the club pays the course fee, and simply asks that runners who complete it agree to lead runs occasionally for two years.
England Athletics says that the LiRF Award ‘is designed to prepare you to provide a safe and enjoyable running experience for young people aged 12+ and adults of any ability. The course covers risk assessment, warm-ups, cool downs, and how to lead fun running sessions for a mixed ability group of runners.’
If you are interested in the LiRF or CiRF courses, then please view our policy for supporting leaders.
Our leaders support the coaching team, and lead groups of runners on our tempo and long runs. You can read the Guidance for Leaders and separate Guidance for Runners below.