How Not To Train For A Marathon

When I decided to train for the Nottingham marathon, I thought it would be just a case of ‘upping the miles’ and all would be fine. There I was, Googling marathon plans for first time marathon runners. Here’s my personal three tips on how not to train.

Number one: Be Realistic

I can’t emphasise this enough. Don’t, whatever you do, tell yourself you’ll just be able to up the miles and be done with it. This advice would be good for a half marathon training plan. But you can’t just up that to 26.2 miles. It’s over a quarter of 100 miles.

Yes you’re more than capable of running a marathon, but things WILL go wrong. Expect them. Don’t expect. Life will get in the way. The initial buzz will settle down and the realness that you have actually paid to participate will hit you. You will procrastinate. So here’s number two.

Number two: Create something to work with

In the early days of ‘omg I’ve signed up for my first marathon’ excitement, I quite proudly produced my very own personalised Excel spreadsheet.

But I went wrong a little. Two things are important here.

A) To make a plan. Create something. A note on your door to nudge you to train. A reminder on your phone to make the £40 worth it. An Excel spreadsheet.

B) To not panic if you wobble away from it, for whatever reason. What matters is that you create something to wobble from. You won’t move if you don’t have a goal. It’s always better to move slowly and painfully towards your goal than to not move at all.

Number three: Networking

This is just a really fancy way of saying get support. You’ll need it. But, let me clarify that that’s not me saying you’re weak. You’re training for a marathon, so you’re strong. Respect. But you’re also human. Everyone needs support at some point. Some more than others in different ways, and that’s okay.

Tell Facebook. Screenshot a photograph from last year’s event onto your Instagram. Tweet it. Heck, blog about it. But don’t stop at social media. As incredible and supportive as social media can be for this exact purpose (#marathontraining), your offline, actual friends and family will be your rock.

Nearer the time, sponsorship is a great way to motivate yourself and get support. It will be an encouraging reminder that you’re doing this for good reasons too.