How to Run a Faster Marathon
Chasing a Podium Finish? Here's How to Train to Lower Your Marathon Times
Under 1% of the American population has ever successfully completed a marathon, regardless of time, so if you’re in this select club, give yourself a pat on the back. You’re already at an elite level of physical and cardiovascular fitness and you should take a moment to appreciate that fact.
Okay, moment over; it’s time to get back to busting your butt in the pursuit of excellence. You’ve got the marathon distance down; now you want to cut down your time and maybe even compete. To really speed up your pace and put yourself in contention, you’re going to have to fine-tune your training, and because of the incredible distances involved in marathon running (and therefore the incredible stress placed on the body, week in and week out), there’s far less margin for error.
RELATED: How to Run a Faster Half Marathon
Here’s what you need to do to start making your marathon times competitive.
How to Run a Faster Marathon
Improving your marathon time will require a smarter and more holistic approach to training on a daily basis. At this level of training, everything matters, from your diet to your sleep schedule, so act accordingly.
Bulletproof Your Body
The single most important piece of advice for newcomers to marathon training isn’t even specific to running. Because distance runs impose a huge stress on the body, and because you’re in the extremely small group of people who rack up more miles than most commuters, you need to prioritize injury prevention and recovery. Gone are the days when you could finish your run and hit the shower, with no cooldown jog or post-run stretch, because any little injury, no matter how trivial, can cost you precious days or weeks of training, sabotaging all your progress or even causing you to regress.
Acquaint yourself with the various tools athletes use for physical recovery, from foam rollers and massage balls to massages, saunas, cold plunges and more. Take the time to warm up properly before every run, and equally take the time to cool down when the run comes to an end.
At the end of the day, there’s no approach that can guarantee you stay injury-free (vagaries of fate and all), but if you’re checking off the major boxes and not doing anything foolish, you’re doing everything under your control to stay healthy, and that’s the first battle.
Embrace the Exercise Bike, Elliptical, Rowing Machine or Swimming Pool
No, running isn’t cross-fit, but if you want to maximize your cardiovascular endurance, you’re eventually going to hit a major barrier: muscle fatigue and joint pain. When you’re trying to train your heart and lungs, you want all the emphasis to be on your heart and lungs, not whether or not your muscles, joints and ligaments have recovered sufficiently.
That’s why you need to find a low-impact alternative to running that will spare your muscles and joints while still taxing your heart and lungs. Compared to the high-impact strain of running (especially running on concrete!), swimming, pedaling a bike, running on an elliptical or rowing on a rowing machine are all great ways to push your cardiovascular system to new limits while still giving your anatomy the time it needs to recover from your last run.
Incorporate Slow Runs
This will definitely sound counterintuitive to less experienced runners, but there’s an expression popular among veteran runners that says it all: “Run slow to run fast.” To get better at running, you need to spend a lot of time running, but intelligently varying the intensity of your runs allows you to spend more time running and less time recovering. And that’s where slow runs come in.
A slow run, defined as anything below 80% of your maximum heart rate, is a strategic way to get your reps in without sabotaging your recovery and setting yourself up for unnecessarily painful high-tempo runs. And when you’re training to run a faster marathon, most of your runs should be “slow” runs.
Whether you’re following a program or being coached, you’ll quickly notice that your maximum intensity runs make up only a fraction of your total running volume. This is especially true as you approach race day, when the goal will be to conserve your energy leading up to the big day so that you can push yourself to maximum intensity when it matters most.
Nail Your Nutrition
We’ve already emphasized that marathon training taxes the body to an incredible degree, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out just how heavy the nutritional requirements can be for marathon runners as well. During a marathon, the average runner burns somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,600 calories, which is more than the recommended daily intake for the average human being in an entire day.
Needless to say, if you’re undereating (and that’s easy to do when you’re running marathon-like distances on a regular basis), you’re also underperforming and under-recovering. You don’t need to hire a nutritionist, but neither can you continue winging your diet. It’s time to get deliberate: you should have an idea of your day-to-day calorie requirements, and a meal plan prepared at least the night in advance to hit those numbers.
Furthermore, you’re going to have to start considering nutrient timing. It’s a good idea to get most of your carbs prior to your run, and an equally good idea to get more of your slow-digesting fats and proteins after your run, when your body is in recovery mode. Additionally, you’re going to want to minimize or even entirely cut out greasy, oily and spicy foods, because the less time your body spends digesting, the more time you can spend training.
Find the Perfect Footwear
Unfortunately, you can’t buy yourself a faster marathon time with fancier footwear, but that doesn’t mean that your equipment doesn’t matter. Normal running shoes are great for normal runners, but if you’re a marathon runner, you have different requirements for your shoes, and those are worth considering to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your shoes.
Marathon shoes should be extra-light, because every additional ounce of weight matters that much more when the run time is measured in hours rather than minutes, but they should also offer a good amount of impact protection, because, once again, the extra distance translates into extra impact.
Finally, it’s a very good idea to have one pair of shoes for training and another for your actual races. Your training shoes can be heavier and lighter, slowing you down when it doesn’t matter but also offering you additional protection, while your race shoes can be lighter and faster.
If you follow this advice and stay healthy and consistent, your times will drop and you may even find yourself in contention at your next race.
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