Scout Adkin's Top Training Tips For Fell Race Championships

Scout has been a competitive fell runner since she was 10 years old. She is the current British Mountain Running champion and was selected to represent Great Britain at the World Mountain Running Championship in 2021. 

She came 2nd at the World Mountain Running Nations Cup last year. Scout has been Scottish hill running champion 3 times and has recently won the Cumbrian cross country championships for the second time and came second in the Scottish cross country championships. She will be competing in a few trail races this year too.

In addition to her impressive fell running resume, she's also a qualified physiotherapist. We asked Scout for her top training tips for the Fell Race Championships:

1. Decide what your goals are

You cannot train well if you don’t know what your goals are. Is it a race, chasing a time, completing an event? Now you can plan…

2. Planning is key

I like to sit down with a yearly outline calendar with my key races on. From this I then plan my 4 week cycles working backwards. This will include hard, medium and easy weeks – I like to colour coordinate them! When you are running well it is easy to train hard through an easy week but it is really key to give your body that rest and downtime. You need to recover physically and mentally and it will allow your body to adapt to the gains you have made during the previous weeks training.

3. Variety is the spice of life!

When you love to run it is easy to just keep running but your body needs variety, not just including easy runs and run sessions but cross training as well. Non/low impact sports such as swimming and cycling are ideal alternative cardiovascular exercises. One thing I would encourage all runners in my work as a physio to do is some strength and condition every week. This doesn’t necessarily have to be spending hours lifting weights in the gym – some body weight strength and control work at home for 20-30 mins twice a week will do the trick. It will all help reduce the risk of injury.

4. Consistency

Its great making all these plans but sticking to the schedule can be hard! Not just a few weeks but months of consistent weeks of training. This can be hard but make your training plans realistic – don’t overestimate how much you can do in a week.

5. Recovery

Its great doing all the training but you need to think of the recovery – its as important what you do between your runs and sessions as the sessions themselves. Recovery includes many things – sleep, nutrition, post-run stretch/massage etc and down-time. I find relaxing hard – I prefer to be on the go all day but that’s not great for recovery after a hard session! I am getting better at it – I have taken up crafting as a hobby that requires me to sit down but I can still feel like I am being productive! 

6. And finally - Enjoy it!

After doing all of the above you should still love the sport. You should look forward to getting out for a run.