MAKING SURE YOUR MARATHON DOESN'T GO WRONG

Deciding to do your first marathon could be the best decision you’ll ever make. If you get it right, there’s nothing like the feeling of crossing that finish line after a 42.2km journey.

Training up for your first marathon can become a bit complicated if you haven’t done it before or don’t have any guidance. Of course we can help guide your training towards the marathon, just get in contact . But I’m going to skip over the training phase and talk about two key things that can make or break your marathon when it comes to the day of the event.

1. Nutrition - Although eating plenty of carbs in the days leading up to the event (carbo loading) is important, you’re going to need a strategy to top up your carbohydrate/glycogen stores throughout the marathon. If you’re running for over 1.5 - 2 hours, you will start to run out of energy (carbs) if you don’t top up.

The best strategy to counteract this is to use high carb sports gels or drinks at regular intervals throughout the run. My favourite is a brand called ‘Maurten’ but there’s a big range of others that do the trick as well. Whatever you choose as your gel or drink of choice, make sure you practice using them in your long runs before the marathon as some can upset the gut. You don’t want any surprises on marathon day. Choose a couple of bigger long runs and take a gel every 40-60 minutes as a starting point.

You could have the best preparation in the world, but if you don’t take on new energy, it could all fall apart on event day.

2. Pacing
This may seem like an obvious one but if you go out too hard you’re going to pay for it later.
Running a marathon is actually a strange feeling, where you should feel suspiciously good til at least the 30km mark because if you don’t, you’ll be running for a long time feeling like you’ve got concrete in your shoes.

Don’t stress though, you’ll be well prepared and patient enough so this won’t happen.
Firstly, most major marathons have pace groups at milestone times (eg. 3hr, 4hr15 etc) that you can run with for the entire event. Make the most of these if it’s your first time.
Make sure you practice your marathon pace in training. You may be thinking that your marathon pace is your jogging pace or slower, well that’s good, practice running really easy/slow and it will feel comfortable and familiar during the marathon.

Setting a realistic or conservative time goal is a great way to hold yourself back during the event. Even if your goal is to complete the marathon (without a time in mind), having a rough time goal is still helpful to make sure you don’t get carried away in the early stages.

Good luck and if you want any further running advice - get in touch