About The Shire Racing Team.

The Shire Racing Team gets its name from The Shire, where, as Bilbo Baggins knows, all good adventures begin.

The Shire Racing Team is a trail running coaching service based in Squamish, BC. It is intended for experienced trail runners and mountain runners throughout the Sea to Sky corridor who are keen to perform at a higher level. Whether you are shooting for the podium or just a personal best, Brendan can offer individualized training programs for you to help you achieve your race goals.

Meet Your Coach

Coaching Philsophy:

A personalized sustainable approach to training.

I adhere to the philosophy that training programs need to be focused on the individual. What works for some runners, does not work for others: Everyone has different abilities, strengths and weaknesses, training experiences, tolerances, running interests, and histories. The Shire Racing Team has no two runners with the same training program even if they are training towards the same race.

My training plans are also specific to race distance and race course to help your body adapt to the particular challenges of the course.

Through regular communication with you, I will be able to continually fine-tune your personal training program to ensure it is effective at improving your performance and delivering your race goals.

Click to expand the sections below, and read how a personalized training program from The Shire Racing Team can help you to:

1. Train Consistently

You’ll certainly feel like you have fresh legs if you routinely run once or twice per week, but don’t expect to improve over time or to compete to your potential when it comes time to race. Alternatively, over-training will only dampen your performance despite all the hard work and effort you put in. Your legs need to rest and recover to ensure your hard training days are quality efforts. In the long-term, training consistently month after month and year after year can significantly boost your performance. But training consistently is not everything ...

2. Train Smart

Efficiency is very important: Each day’s training will be planned with a purpose so every run is improving your performance in one way or another. The mileage or elevation gain in your training block does not necessarily equate with better performance. It’s easy to get wrapped up in how much mileage you are doing, but this is dependent on the terrain you run on. To train efficiently, my training programs also consider time on feet (i.e. your active time), workout volume and frequency, type of workouts, and the amount of ascent and descent. My training plans are based on principles of adaptational physiology that ultimately allows you to perform at a higher level. But training efficiently is not everything ...

3. Have Fun & Stay Motivated

In order to be sustainable, your training needs to allow some flexibility and creativity for you to enjoy it. If training was all business and no fun, no one would want to keep at it. Your training and racing needs to be more than just a check off your list of goals; it needs to reflect your love for the sport. Why did you get into running or trail running in the first place, and what about it gives you the most energy and drive? Reflecting on how these answers are incorporated into your activities and how they can evolve over time is a crucial step to keep you passionate about all your experiences out on the trails.

What Trail Running Means in the Shire:

There are many different reasons why trail runners are passionate about the sport.

Check out the answers to “What motivates you to trail run/mountain run?” from a wide range of trail runners - the size of the words is proportional to how frequently they were used as an answer.

Interested?

If you can relate to Brendan's coaching and training philosophy, find out more about coaching services using the link below.

Services & Fees