Explore every episode of the podcast Mid Run Chat with Amy & Suzie

In this episode Amy chats to ironman world record holder and European champion, Yvonne van Vlerken, about her long injury-free professional career spanning 20 years, some years competing in as many as 10 ironman events.  

At the age of 47 she is still running personal bests over 10km, half marathon, marathon (2.47) and 50km distances.

With her first serious injury earlier this year at the age of 47, she shares her philosophy towards training, the things she's changed, and the secrets that she believes have allowed her to stay competitive and remain hungry to chase records at the age of 47.

 

Inspired? Join Suzie & Amy on Nov 27th to plan your winter training for Spring Success. Sign up here

Yvonne is now a triathlon and running coach, based in Leipzig, Germany. She is fluent in Dutch, German and English. For more information about her coaching and to get in touch with her you can visit her website: https://www.vonsystrifamily.com and also follow her latest competitive endeavours via instagram: yvonnevanvlerken_vonsy

Amy and Suzie are joined by an old friend and former training partner, Gemma Hillier-Moses.

Returning from for a 12th place finish at her debut CCC, Suzie and Amy catch up with Gemma  and hear a first hand insight into the world of elite trail and ultra running.  Gemma talks openly about how her approach to running has evolved over the years; from chasing times and following the stopwatch to learning to trust her body and run to feel. Gemma shares the key events and coaches who have influenced and shaped her as an athlete and individual, and how she has adapted again as the demands of trail and ultra running have taken her into a very different world from road and track. Gemma shares the experience that changed her perspective on running and life. Diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in 2012, Gemma reflects on the role that physical fitness and, perhaps even more importantly, an athlete’s mindset played during an extraordinarily difficult period of her life. Now a professional trail runner supported by HOKA and Suunto, Gemma shares what training looks like today, why pace has become far less important than feel, and what she has learned from stepping up to some of the biggest races in international trail running. A conversation about old training days, changing perspectives, trusting your body, resilience, and what running can mean at very different stages of life.

More Info on Hosts: Coach Suzie on Instagram: @suzie_richards

Coach Amy on Instagram: @amyfryrunning

Find Our Guest Gemma on Instagram @gemhilly_moses and on youtube here

This week on Mid-Run Chat,  hosts Amy and Suzie dive headlong into the exhilarating world of trail, fell, and mountain running. With Amy coming from a track, road, and cross-country background, she’s keen to find out from Suzie what's going on in the Fell, Trail and Mountain running world. And why it’s drawing so many runners from the roads. Since Suzie moved to North Wales she has been running off road in the hills and now organises mountain races. She tries to explains all to Amy. - The legendary Dragon’s Back Race that took place this week, a grueling six-day journey stretching across Wales, from Conwy in the north down to Cardiff in the south. - The soaring popularity of events like the UTMB and the vibrant local fell races that bring runners together for epic challenges and stunning scenery. - Incredible FKT (fastest known time) from Lucy Gossage on the Pennine Way. Whether you’re a road runner curious about the trails or a seasoned mountain goat, there’s something here for everyone.     

It's heating up, for both Suzie in North Wales and Amy in Dresden, Germany the temperatures are rising. In this episode they discuss how they are coping with the heat, some tip and tricks for adapting training or more importantly adapting your mindset; staying flexible, being curious and having fun in the sun!

This week they also discuss other curveballs that can come and interrupt training and how best to deal with them.  Suzie reveals her secret strategy for fitting in training when work days are long in the mountains and Amy shares the tips she has been using with athletes who are facing high temperatures for upcoming races.

If you have a Qs you want answering or what help with your training send Amy/ Suzie a message:

📩Contact us Amy: amyfryrunning@gmail.com Suzie: suzierichards_coach@outlook.com

This week Suzie returns from the Welsh 1000s Fell Race and the Castle Relays with sore legs so she and Amy settled down to think on the often frustrating reality of training hard but not getting faster.

Suzie and Amy deep dive into the world of plateaus, ruts, and the uncomfortable truth that sometimes you’re basically a Ferrari with no gears, flat tyres, and terrible fuel economy.

Amy and Suzie talk through the times their own progress has stalled, what Suzie’s lab testing revealed (the engine was fine, everything else needed work), and why specific training beats “just train harder” every single time.

This discussion looks into why most often than not VO2 max isn't the place to focus but it pays to focus on pushing your LT1 and LT2, improve fat‑burning and why easy runs and rest days matter more than you think.

If you’re stuck, frustrated that your ticking off the training but not getting faster this episode is your sign that you’re not broken, you’re maybe training the wrong system. Want help to get faster?

📩Contact us Amy: amyfryrunning@gmail.com Suzie: suzierichards_coach@outlook.com

This week, both of us are sidelined  Amy with plantar fasciitis, Suzie with a grumpy knee. So we’re diving into the messy, unglamorous reality of being injured runners.

We talk through the symptoms, the rehab routines that are helping, and how we’re approaching the slow, steady return to running.

Suzie shares the head‑over‑heart decision to defer her London Marathon place &what it felt like watching from the sidelines as Sebastian Sawe rewrote history with his 1.59.30 record run. 

We get into whether performances like that are simply “too good to be true” or a sign of how far super shoes, nutrition, and smarter training have pushed the sport.

We also reflect on what likely caused our own injuries and what we’ll change next time: looking at technique to spot weak links, fixing imbalances before they become problems, and why simple plyometrics might be the most underrated injury‑prevention tool out there. Is skipping and hopping genuinely the way forward?

It’s an honest conversation about frustration, patience, and learning to train with a bit more wisdom than ego.

It's been a busy week with Amy and Suzie experiencing the two contrasting ends of the training and racing spectrum. 

Amy surprises herself by putting herself on a start line with no grand plan and ends up racing the people around her rather than her watch. A 36:23 10K later, she’s left wondering how far you can go when you stop micromanaging pace and just get on with racing.#

Suzie’s marathon build, meanwhile, hits an obstacle. A sharp knee pain mid‑mountain‑day forces her to pause, reassess, and return to the one rule past injuries have made non‑negotiable: take it one day at a time. We were both jumping up and down on Sunday watching the World Indoor Championships and Britain’s middle‑distance gold medals. Both Suzie and Amy are big fans of Coaches Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter and discuss what makes them and the athletes they coach Gold Medal winners. 

Suzie kicks things off with her weekly hot‑cross‑bun fuelling fail — the one that left her shivering at a bus stop and panic‑buying an £8 fleece just to survive the journey home.

Meanwhile, Amy reveals the diet that shocked her physio and completely flipped her shopping habits on their head.

Together, they dive into how their pre‑session rituals, mid‑run gel choices, and post‑session recovery favourites have evolved as they’ve grown into marathon runners — and how none of it has been linear, tidy, or what the textbooks promised.

They unpack years of nutrition curiosity: falling down the paleo rabbit hole, dabbling in high‑fat phases, experimenting with vegetarian and vegan eating, and eventually emerging as two runners now obsessed with getting all the carbs in. Training has changed. Their bodies have changed. And their food — thankfully — has changed with them. This episode is honest, funny, and full of the kind of real‑world fuelling lessons you only learn the hard way.

📩How to contact us? Amy: amyfryrunning@gmail.com  Suzie: suzierichards_coach@outlook.com Find us on Instagram: Suzie_Richards Amyfryrunning

 

 

 

Rest over rated or essential ? Why do so many coaching books — from Jack Daniels to Arthur Lydiard — barely mention it? Is it the mindset that a coach’s job is to fill every day with training? Or the old belief that a good night’s sleep is enough recovery to go again?

Suzie and Amy sit down after a weekend of racing — Amy taking the win at her local cross‑country (with the kids collecting medals too), and Suzie finishing 2nd at the local fell race that doubled up as the  Welsh Short Fell Race Championships. Amy also shares a surprising update on her back issues and a twist she didn’t see coming. From there, they dive into the big conversation the running world avoids: rest.

They unpack the booming “recovery industry” of boots, guns, rollers and cold plunges, and contrast it with what the evidence actually supports: sleep, fuelling, mobility, meditation, and lowering cortisol in small, meaningful bursts throughout the day.

Suzie and Amy explore what training really does to the body — not just the legs, but the immune system, major organs (especially the heart), hormones, glycogen stores, and inflammation. They talk honestly about burnout, breakdown, and why the body can only repair through genuine rest.

They also open up about the psychological side of recovery: the guilt, the fear of losing fitness, the identity tied to “always training”, and the mental fatigue that builds when you never stop.

And in their most personal stories yet, Amy shares the reality of five stress fractures in five years, and Suzie reflects on the overuse hip injuries that ended her triathlon career — both rooted in not valuing rest when they needed it most.

They close with a bigger question: Are we chasing short‑term PBs and race calendars at the expense of long‑term health — especially heart health? And what would it look like to take the cautious, sustainable, athlete‑for‑life approach instead?

This episode is a reminder that rest isn’t optional — it’s where the training actually works.

📩How to contact us? Amy: amyfryrunning@gmail.com Suzie: suzierichards_coach@outlook.com

Episode 3: Data — Your Best Friend or Your Worst Coach? Amy and Suzie dive straight into the big question: Is all this running data actually helping us… or quietly wrecking our training?   Suzie opens with a brutally honest debrief from the Sheep Tracks Fell Race — yes, she won the Champion Ewe trophy, but also ran herself straight into a fatigue crater thanks to fuelling mistakes and a marathon session days before. Meanwhile, Amy’s week has been peak real‑life chaos: three kids with head lice, an ill cat, and her husband working away. Suzie wasn’t far behind, breaking down on the M56. Training still happened , not perfectly, not scientifically,  but in the messy, flexible way that represents real life. They unpack the gut‑health and fuelling webinar they both attended, then get into the real heart of the episode: data that helps vs. data that hijacks your training.   Heart rate gets a shout‑out as one of the few tools that can genuinely reign you in , stopping every run drifting into the grey zone, keeping easy runs actually easy, and preventing threshold sessions from tipping over LT2 into “ego pace”. They break down training zones without the lab‑coat energy: why beginners don’t need to overthink it, why Suzie now prefers a simple three‑zone model, and how LT1 and LT2 can guide smarter sessions without becoming another stick to beat yourself with. They also talk about useful benchmark tests that don’t require a physiology lab: a hard parkrun as a 5K effort check‑in, and the classic MAF test (180 minus age) for a 30‑minute aerobic baseline.   And Amy lands the final punch: are we running well… or are we just running to produce good data?   📩How to contact us? Amy: amyfryrunning@gmail.com Suzie: suzierichards_coach@outlook.com

Suzie and Amy kick off 2026 with a brutally honest catch-up: creaky bodies, acupuncture experiments, osteopath verdicts, and the reality of running through midlife. But this isn’t just a chat about aches — it’s a deep dive into how our definitions of success and consistency have radically shifted since our Loughborough Uni days.

Back then, ticking every box on the training plan was the gold standard. Now? We’re asking better questions: Are we sleeping well? Recovering properly? Showing up as thoughtful athletes, mums, partners, and humans?

From triathlon racing to post-kids perspective, we explore how time off, life experience, and a few injuries have taught us that missing a run doesn’t mean missing the point.

Click play for honesty, laughter, and a fresh take on what it means to train well — 20 years on.

How many races can you really fit into a year without blowing up your marathon training? This week, we discuss planning a race calendar, the temptation to over‑commit, and how what a realistic season may look like when you want strong training blocks and personal bests.

Suzie & Amy look at their race planning and what they have learnt across the years.