My First Marathon - What I did (Right and Wrong!)

snaffled

So for what its worth, I did my first marathon last December. Thanks for all the great advice that I have read on the boards here from far more accomplished runners than I. It’s such a great resource, and was really important for the successful completion of the marathon. Seriously, thanks.
Below are some things that I did, some right, some wrong probably, but it seemed to work out for me. I’m 45, reasonably fit, bike a bit and did a couple of 10km runs a month before starting on the marathon. I didn’t do any structured plan, but sort of cobbled a few things together. Anyway, and in no particular order, here it is:

Build your life around training; don’t build training around your life. OK, probably sounds worse than it was. I decided to do the marathon 10 weeks before the event, and it was far more effective to decide what training I had to do, and build my other life around this, rather than try and fit my training into my already pretty busy life. Just a question of priorities, and forcing myself to take it seriously.

Read a lot. There is so much great stuff on the web about how to train, including on these boards. Google like mad is my advice. Didn’t necessarily take the advice, but good to know it.

Pick a time, any time. Goes against what some say about the first marathon, but I had to have a goal. It focused my training, pushed me on days when I wasn’t really into it, and such a great feeling to achieve it. FWIW, I chose 4 hours, and just about made it. (There is a possibility that this entire post is just so i can tell random people I did a 4 hour marathon)

Use music to motivate yourself. I didn’t use headphones during the marathon, but did on some of those more routine (off the public road) runs where I was just getting in the miles on a dull Tuesday evening. The live version of Caravan from Van Morrison and Jersey girl live from Springsteen are two songs that match my stride when I am doing a 5 minute km for some reason. My longer runs in interesting areas were headphone free, and never on a public road with traffic.

Get the right shoes. Learned this after some gnarly looking black toenails appeared. What suits for the gym or biking isn’t necessarily right for running.

Use a running watch. Or an Apple Watch in my case. I’m sure Samsung & Motorola can do exactly the same. I used it to show me the minutes per km every time I glanced at it. I knew the closer I was to 5.10 per km, the better. So useful to keep me at a steady pace. (Or keep me slower at the start on longer runs, where it is easy to get a bit carried away in the first 5km)

Spreadsheets/Runkeeper/planning. Maybe I’m geeky, but I did spreadsheets with times per km, looking at various options. I knew then what times I should be on when I passed the distance markers during the race. I really enjoyed looking at all my run details on Runkeeper afterwards also.

Mix the training up. I did a 10km during the week, a 10km on Saturday, and then a longer run on Sunday. (15km, 22km, 30km, and one hilly 31km) I also did a bike ride once a week (about 60km, and not a fast one), and gym for some dumbbells. I increased my running distance too quickly which leads me on to:

Knee Strap. After some slight knee pain, I bought 2 knee straps online and used them (after slowing the running a bit also). No more knee pain. (Luck probably a big factor in this). I used the knee straps in the race also, and had small knee pain after 15km, but it went away after about 20 mins.

Use band-aids. Bloody nipples to be avoided at all costs.

For fueling, I ran with a banana that I ate slowly after about 15km. Then some energy chews every few km, after about 20km. The Gatorade also gave me some energy. Pre-race I had some bagel, a coffee and a blueberry muffin. Started at 5am, so breakfast was about 3.30am.

Overplan. I live in a cold country, and did the marathon in a hot & humid one. Hard to train for this, but I overplanned the Gatorade, and ran with a Gatorade filled waterbottle strapped to my hand. Stopped at every station for either a water and 2 Gatorade, or a Gatorade and 2 waters. I was still properly dehydrated after the race, but if I hadn’t forced myself to hydrate right from the start, there’s no way I would have met my time.

I loved the whole process, and the marathon itself. The sun came up during the last hour of the race, and I slowed considerably, but still finished ok, and I think my over-thinking the process had a lot to do with this.

Thanks again to all for the super advice on these boards, and now thinking of trying to make my next trip home to include Sunday 30th October.