Many of you reading this may have run the London Marathon last weekend. No doubt you will all have many stories as a result of your day. You will also no doubt have experienced many different emotions about your achievement. However, having had a few days to reflect on your performance you will no doubt categorise your run in one of the following ways:
‘I had a great race’
You ran the perfect race for you with pacing which matched your race plan, no niggles on the course, you were relaxed throughout the race (well, as relaxed as you can be running for 26.2 miles!) and you achieved either the your predicted time or maybe even achieved a PB.
‘I had a good race’
You ran the majority of the race as planned, but did not achieve your predicted time. It may have been that on the day you gave the race your best effort but perhaps you hadn’t managed to follow your training plan properly or you were training nursing an injury (in which case, well done for managing to complete a marathon at all!). Alternatively you may not have followed your race plan, going off too fast and making it difficult for yourself in the latter part of the race. BUT having reflected, you know you have the ability to achieve your desired time.
‘I had a poor race’
This can come down to many things. Maybe you didn’t have enough training under your belt, you may have overestimated your ability, you might have been injured and thought ‘sod it - I’ve paid my money and I WILL run this marathon’ or perhaps you worked yourself into an anxious state because you had a lot of sponsorship money pledged and you didn’t want to let everyone down - tense people never run their best.
Whatever the outcome of your race, the next thing you will no doubt be thinking about is ‘what do I do now?’.
For a great race, you would think that the answer to this is simple – more of the same. However this would be WRONG. For instance if you have trained for a three hour marathon and come in, in 2:59:59 then your next challenge (should you wish to accept it) is to train for a SUB-three hour marathon and believe me the training for this will be VERY different.
For a good race you have a great base to work from. Your training was good, so all you need to do is create a situation which means you will be able to follow the whole of your training plan and achieve all its time goals. If you have been injured then once you have given your body time to heal, next time you WILL carry out your race plan starting off slow, consolidating in the middle and maintaining an even pace to the end. Very few PBs are achieved by starting off fast to try and put some ‘time in the bank’.
For a poor race, my best advice is, that you consider getting some help if you have not managed to fulfil your goals by yourself! There are many members of running clubs who are more than happy to help anyone struggling to achieve their best race, OR alternatively consider employing a professional person such as a coach/personal trainer to create an individual plan for you.
You have a period of time now to do the following:
RECOVER - never underestimate the time your body takes to heal, it is as important as ANY of your training.
If you had a run you were happy with don’t be shy about telling EVERYONE - well for at least a week anyway - and make sure you thank all the people in your life who have supported you in this mad thing you love doing (they have already listened to the moans about aches and crap weather and missed sessions so give all the good stuff too).
Make notes of your thoughts and ideas to improve next time or just to jog your memory, for example the name of the gel that worked for you or that the Nike socks rubbed your heal. This post-race self-debrief will pay dividends when you are in training again as you will be working with tried and tested ideas.
Your legs are not hurting so much because they don’t like you, they are saying we have worked very hard for you so can you now please look after us! Think about having a massage to push all the rubbish out of the muscles and lengthen them to aid a quick recovery so you can trash them again at your next A race.
And finally ENJOY the feeling of completing the London Marathon, whatever the result!
As a postscript - my own running has slowed a bit and I need to get my backside out and put some miles in and begin to build my long distance running up. My next post will cover how things have been going and a few results and feelings on the upcoming start of my EPIC year after all:
“There is no better feeling than having trashed another pair of trainers because of too many hours of running”
.JPG)
