I went to a workshop by Polar which gave a really good presentation on how to programme your running.

They said they'd email it to me so as soon as they do I'll put it up on here. You can use a heart rate monitor but even without one a lot of the principles they spoke about were still useful.

The key thing being allowing sufficient recovery. Don't get her to do two hard running sessions on consecutive days if you want her to be as explosive as she can possibly be.

I wouldn't completely drop all the longer slow runs she does now either. I know that a lot of people say you don't need them at all for boxing but people at the Polar workshop advocated one longish, slow session a week to keep your base fitness up and help your body cope with the hard stuff.

Sure she doesn't need to run marathons but I think the two 5 miles runs she does every week now are good. Maybe could make one slightly longer and drop the other completely if you want to change it.

It's still classed as a hard day because it's long though so don't do it immediately the day before or after hard running.

Coming back from a knee injury I don't do really long runs but I get in one 2 hour slow swim every week and it feels good. Maybe I'm biased though - I have to admit that because I've had my fun in distance running and endurance events