Marathon Training Essentials

Training for marathons


If you are new to running, build up to the marathon with a minimum of six months' training. If you are already running 30 miles or more every week on a regular basis, you can build up to the marathon distance in about three months.

Choosing a marathon

There's plenty of variety on offer. You can choose to make your marathon debut at a big city marathon, such as London or Edinburgh, a rural classic, such as the Loch Ness Marathon, or a more low-key race, like the Kent Coastal Marathon. If your aspirations lie further afield, going abroad to run a marathon can be a truly memorable experience, and a great way to see a new country. You're sure to find extra motivation during your training if you know you'll be running a marathon at Victoria Falls or among giant redwood trees at the Avenue of the Giants Marathon in California.

Marathon training essentials

You've decided to run a marathon and have started to follow a schedules. If you follow these 10 essentials of marathon training, you will arrive at the start line in fine form.

Show commitment

Even if you have been running regularly for several years, training for a marathon is a serious undertaking. It has been said that the marathon has ways of finding you out if you have scrimped on your long runs, for example, or dedicated too little time to training. You should start your marathon training acknowledging that your life will be a little different for the next few months. You will be pouring your energy into training, so try to simplify the rest of your life if possible.

Build gradually

You already know that you should build up your mileage gradually when you start to run, and for a marathon this is even more important. You'll be covering greater distances than you have before and need to give your body time to adapt. Always follow a hard run with an easy day.

Run long

The weekly long run forms the foundation of your marathon training. Even if you have to skip other sessions, this is the one you should make a point of completing. It's important to resist the temptation to be greedy though. You only need to do one long run every week - train more and you will increase the risk of injury.

As well as building your endurance, long runs give you the psychological confidence to achieve your goal. Knowing that you can run 20 miles on a lonely training run will help you to breeze through race day when the screaming supporters who appreciate your commitment will encourage your every step.

Live a balanced life

It's not just your training that is important in the build-up to a marathon - your lifestyle will have an impact, too. You might be able to complete a marathon on four hours' sleep a night and a diet junk food, but you'll find it much easier to recover from the volume of training if your body has a nutritious supply of food and the opportunity to rest well after those long runs.

A successful marathon is as much a mental challenge as a physical one. If there are other major events going on in your life, such as parenthood, change of job or new house, your training will suffer. Try to simplify rather than complicate your life when you start to train for a marathon and explain to friends and family that you're committed to the training for a finite amount of time.

Dress rehearsal

On your weekly long runs, you can experiment with everything from what you're going to eat and drink during the marathon to what you're going to wear. The marathon is challenging enough without having to worry whether your new socks will cause blisters. You might even want to practise running at the same time of day that the marathon starts.

Do a trial run

If you are aiming at a big city marathon one of the biggest differences you'll notice between training and the race is running in a congested group of runners. You need to practise this just as you practise everything else. Try to run at least one race with a field of more than 5,000 runners in the build-up to your marathon.

Ease back

Many runners find that tapering in the last few weeks before the marathon is the most difficult part of their training schedule. During the hard training of the previous weeks you may have been looking forward to the taper, when you can relax a little and don't have to run as far, but it can be torture; you've done the hard training, feel great and simply want race day to arrive, just remember that other than rest, there is little you can do in the final two weeks to help you run a better marathon, but plenty of things that can ruin it.

Negative splits

After a few weeks of tapering, many runners will fly across the start line of the race, forgetting all their good intentions to start slowly and run a negative split (completing the second half faster than the first). Your pace at the start may feel slow but it's worth holding yourself back - a minute per mile too fast in the early stages of a marathon can cost you five minutes a mile in the latter stages.

Six and out

The last six miles are the true test of the marathon. It's unknown territory for many first-timer runners (long runs often peak at 20 miles) and it's a tough mental battle running with fuel-depleted, tired muscles. This is where everyone suffers, particularly if you started too fast. Try to make sure that you eat some carbohydrate early on in the race, such as some gels or a sports drink, and then try to hold something back for this part of the race, especially if it's your first marathon.