Mikes Top Novice Marathon Training Tips

• Adopt a holistic approach, it’s essential to look at your whole lifestyle when you are thinking about commencing a marathon training programme.
• Involve family and friends; there is a lot of training needed to complete a successful marathon, so involving family and friends into your new found obsession helps with any conflict of time consumed by your training schedule.
• Ensure you have structure to your training, each of your runs need a purpose.
• Don’t become dependent on your training schedule, things happen and days will be missed, so don’t panic or feel guilty.
• Progression in your training, but do it in a structured way and be patient.
• Be realistic about the amount of training you can do, there’s no point in saying from the get go that you will train 5days per week when you really can only commit to 3days a week.
• Allow rest and recovery into your weekly schedule.
• Reward yourself as short term goals such as your first 10km is completed and personal best times are achieved.
• Plan your races carefully, plan back from the Marathon date itself and look at race distances and dates and plan them into your training.
• Find a training partner; it can be more enjoyable at times to have a fellow runner alongside you, especially on those long runs.
• Devise a variety of training runs, routes, terrain, variety of surfaces to run over (too much running on road can be hard on your joints).
• Find a local specialist running store to sort out a gait analysis to find the correct pair of running shoes for you to protect against injury.
• Ensure your diet is suitable for your training.
• Stay hydrated, drink lots of water.
• Find time for mobility and training exercises.
• If you get injured, take a couple of days out, never train on an injury, just rest up…  If its serious then get it checked out.
• Above all – Enjoy your running.

By Mike Buss.

Tags: London Marathon, Marathon Advice, Running, Training

Category: Fitness Advice, Marathon Advice, Running Advice