How making several small changes cut 30 mins off my marathon PR!
Following on from my last post on how several little miscalculations and mistakes added up to turn an ultra PR attempt into a real type 2 epic. Here is an example of the opposite. Check out that post too!
When I started running seriously about 3 years ago, a marathon was the distance that people seemed to hold in some high regard. At first for me distance wasn’t the main goal, more the character of the race. And road wasn’t really interesting for me. However as I progressed, I realised that a road marathon might be a good way to measure my fitness year to year.
I had run marathon distance alone for training in the past on trail or road/trail. 6hrs was a relaxed time for those training runs. My 1st ‘official’ marathon was my local marathon race, the Standard Chartered Jersey Marathon. I estimated about 4hrs, I ran 3:55. I was very pleased with the effort, though I knew there was massive room for improvement there as always!
That was during those good times of exponential improvement that occurs after one starts a new sport/ discipline. This year, though feeling strong in general, I had noticed a slow down in gains, and as my last post recounts, experienced some negative results.
Therefore, I took a look at some little things I could do to stack the odds in my favour.
1: Taper the training! I cut down my training load during the week leading up to race day, I only did about 10k that week, and slow paced.
2: Proper nights sleep before race day! This was probably the most important thing for me, get a full nights sleep, proper dinner, nice light breakfast, and a coffee!
3: Know the route elevation profile. This was important to plan when to hold back a bit and when to up the pace a little.
4: Small amounts of energy intake, often. I used a gel that agreed with me and had a good mouth feel, not too sickly. And most importantly, I tested them properly before race day.
5: Lastly, stick with a similarly paced group. I found it nicer to be with others of the same pace to keep the tempo going, when alone I find that I either go too fast or am more likely to slow down steadily without even noticing.
All together these little things combined to make my finishing time 3:23!
I hope to keep these in mind for future running adventures, and am excited to see what I can aim for in the ultra marathon side of things! I hope the 5 readers this will likely get have enjoyed it! Make sure to like and subscribe for more!
Fun Once Its Done 