Top marathon racing tips

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
You’ve been training for months on end; carefully increasing your weekly mileage, diligently building up your long runs, perhaps blasting out some interval sessions, including recovery runs and flexibility exercises; in fact you’ve left no stone unturned in preparation for your big day on the roads. Or have you?

The marathon distance of is one to be respected and whatever your expected finishing time, it requires much more preparation than solely logging training miles. To succeed at any level in a marathon requires attention to a multitude of other factors, including:

• Pace planning
• Mental preparation
• Tapering
• Racing strategies

So if you’re aiming for a marathon, let us show you how to enhance your chances of success over the famous 26.2 distance.

The trouble with the marathon...
The great challenge of the marathon (other than the distance itself!) is the fact that you’re trying to get everything absolutely right, at a precise time, on the one day of the year when the race takes place. If you have a bad day at the office in a shorter race such as a 5k, 10k or even a half-marathon;  well there’s always another one in a couple of weeks. However because running a marathon is so demanding and as there won’t be another one along for a while, getting it right becomes much more important. Each and every one of the following marathon top tips will help ensure that you don’t fail on the big day.

Plan, plan and plan again.
Race day is a big day; your big day, so you should leave nothing to chance. How will you travel to the start? Do you know the route? What about last minute roadworks or hold-ups? Where is the car park? Is there a baggage storage facility? What are the registration instructions? All these questions and more need to be answered and ticked off well in advance of your race so that nothing is left to chance and you can focus solely on your personal race.

How long is the marathon course?
Obviously it’s 26.2 miles but how well do you actually know the route? Are there any hills and if so, where are they? How many drinks stations can you expect or might you need to mobilise some family members at strategic points to supply you with energy drinks? What about the finish? Checking out the final few miles is especially important so that you have a clear picture of the topography and layout. The last thing you want is to mistake or miss a mile marker and either push too hard too soon or alternatively miss your cue. Ideally, try and run sections of the race route but if that is difficult, driving the course will help and also try to talk to other runners who have completed the race and who can pass on valuable tips about the course.

Tapering for your marathon
More marathons are ruined through poor tapering than anything else. Over the preceding months, your body has taken a battering as you’ve churned out mile after mile. In the final three weeks, it’s payback time. That doesn’t mean no training at all but it does mean following a carefully structured taper programme that allows your body to recover so you’re ready for your big effort. Bouncing back correctly can easily give you between a 5% and 10% improvement overall, so follow the tapering guidelines in your schedule so that you toe the line raring to go.

Be weatherwise
What if it rains or if it’s very hot, or windy? You’ll still run the race but if you haven’t thought through exactly what you need to do in different weather conditions, you could be caught out. Think about previous training runs or races that you’ve successfully completed in difficult weather conditions. The strategies that you employed then will serve you well on race day, whether it’s extra hydration or sheltering behind other runners. By focusing on how effectively you can cope with whatever Mother Nature throws at you, you’ve eliminated another area of uncertainty and improved your chances of success.

Visualise running success
An often overlooked area of preparation is mental tuning. Visualisation techniques where you effectively ‘pre-programme’ your mind with positive self images is a proven tool to enhance performance. Imagine yourself running well right up to the finish, eating up the miles and hitting your target splits so that you build a positive mental picture. Think how good you’ll feel when you achieve your goal and banish any thoughts of failure. When the going gets tough during your race, you can recall these positive images and they will help you get through any bad patches.

Fuel your running well
Correctly fuelling your body to run a marathon requires both correct training; so that you become acclimatised to glycogen sparing (using your energy stores efficiently) and loading as much carbohydrate as possible in the final few days before the race. The more carbohydrate that you can store in your liver and muscles will mean the longer it is before the dreaded ‘wall’ threatens to make an appearance. Focus on a high carbohydrate intake in the run-up to your race and try to keep your stores topped up as you run by taking on board energy drinks at regular intervals.

Pace yourself
Start off too fast in any race and you’ll pay for it later on. Start off too fast in the marathon and it’ll seriously bite you back at 20 miles – when you’ve still got a whole 10k left to complete. Pre-calculate your intended mile or kilometre splits and practice running at that exact pace until it’s locked into your psyche. To further help correct pacing, write your splits for 3,6,9,12,15,18,21 and 24 miles on the backs of your hands and continually check your pace as you race.

Maintain concentration
Keeping your focus for several hours non-stop isn’t easy but good concentrating skills will help save energy, keep your running efficient and help you follow the shortest route around the course. (Race measurers always measure diagonally corner to corner, so cutting the bends isn’t cheating and every metre you save translate to real time savings when viewed over 26.2 miles). During your long runs, practice concentrating and blocking out external distractions so that on race day, you’re effectively ‘running in a tunnel’, purely focusing on your pace and your race.

Having invested so much effort and precious spare time in getting to the taper phase of your training, the last thing you want to do is to blow your chances of success by inadequate additional preparation. Attention to the specific details outlined above is guaranteed to improve your performance in some way, whether that means getting to the finish line faster or simply just getting to the finish line. Marathons don’t come around very often, so make sure that you make the most of yours!