Run Your Best Marathon: Your trusted guide to training and racing better

Introduction

This is a book for runners. You might not be a marathon runner yet, but you have enough miles under your belt to understand that there’s more to running than putting one foot in front of the other. You’ve seen how it gives you a chance to find out what you’re made of, to discover untapped resourcefulness and determination, to experience the thrill of overcoming obstacles and accomplishing goals. Whether you run alone or with others, you’ve probably felt that sense of being part of something bigger – the ever-growing community who find pleasure, challenge, meaning and fun in this simple act.

Runners of all persuasions get this. But there is something magical about the marathon. I was 22 when I ran my first one – not London, but Luton. My mum drove me to the race and we passed a sign on the motorway that read ‘Luton 26’. Those 26 miles (42km) seemed to take an age to cover in the car, filling me with fear and doubt about my abilities to run so far. But I did. And like many runners who believe we are only ever going to do ‘one’, I found myself in the hours, days and weeks afterwards wondering: should I have done X in training? Would Y have made me run quicker? If I’d done Z, maybe I wouldn’t have hit the wall... Before I knew it, I was signing up to another 26.2, and another.

You might have experienced something the same. Or perhaps you’ve not yet crossed a marathon finish line. Either way, this book is for you. I’m well aware that there is already a wealth of information on running marathons out there, from websites and apps to podcasts, magazines and other books. But I wrote this particular book with some specific aims in mind.

First, to guide you through the latest evidence-based information and advice on every aspect of marathon training and racing – without blinding you with science. Second, to present this information and advice in a way that allows you to make the best decisions about which bits are most relevant and important to you. For example, if your goal is to just complete the distance with a big grin on your face, the training priorities may be different than for someone who has a set goal time in mind. If you’re one giant niggle in running shoes, you might take a different approach to someone who rarely gets injured.

Much of the information derived from sports science research and coaching comes from those working with elite performers. Simply extrapolating those findings doesn’t always work, because those athletes’ natural talent – and the fact that they are pursuing running as a career – sets them apart. One study found that elite Kenyan runners train 10–14 times a week. I don’t, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

I’ll give you an example of how extrapolation from the elites can fall down. It’s often advised that the long run should comprise 20–25 per cent of weekly mileage. That’s fine, if you’re running 80 miles (129km) a week – but what if you’re running 30 miles (48km)? How will you get to the higher reaches of those long runs without breaking the ‘rule’? You need to consider the science, but within the context of the real world of the amateur runner with limitations and commitments – practical, physical, social, mental – other than running to fit into our lives.

My marathon-training programmes are not based on set time goals, because every runner embarking on them is unique. Instead, they are based on training volume – you might be limited in terms of how much you can do by time availability, inclination, energy levels or injury vulnerability, so there are different commitment levels (from three days a week to five or six days a week) with options for first-timers and those aiming to improve on an existing time within each level. But you may decide, having read this book, that you want to devise your own training plan – and you will be equipped with the tools to do so.

One of the biggest mistakes I find people make with marathon training is leaving themselves out of the equation. They decide, for example, that they’d like to run a sub-3 hrs 30 mins marathon and find a ‘Run sub-3 hrs 30 mins plan’ to follow. But this plan ‘knows’ nothing about the runner: their previous experience, their fitness level, age, injury propensity, training availability, mental attitude, lifestyle – all of which influence what is achievable. Not only is it impossible for the plan to guide everyone who follows it to a 3 hrs 29 mins finish, it may also represent way too much training for one runner, not enough for another and simply the wrong emphasis for yet another.

It’s one thing to know a lot about the marathon – quite another to know a lot about yourself as a runner. Fitting the two together is what makes coaching both an art and a science – and is the challenge that has kept me fascinated for the last two decades.

While you’re in marathon training – a fact you’ll already be aware of if you’ve run marathons before (as will your partner/family!) – it will occupy a lot of your time and thoughts. And rightly so, because what you do outside of those few hours a week when you are running greatly affects how well your body ‘absorbs’ the training you undertake. That’s why I cover sleep, nutrition and stress within the pages of this book.

While training errors (too little, too much or the wrong kind) are the main reason people underperform in the marathon, race-day mistakes are a close second. Did you know that running just 2 per cent too fast over the first 6 miles (10km) of a marathon is likely to cause you to slow over the final miles? Or that the best time to take your first energy gel is before you’ve even started running? There are physical quandaries to consider, too, like how to race on a hot day, how to get in enough fuel and fluid without upsetting your guts, as well as mental challenges – start-line nerves, loss of focus, negative self-talk – to overcome. I’ve included a whole section on race-day preparation and race execution to help get you from the start line to the finish line to the best of your ability.

So many things need to come together to create the perfect race. But rather than being daunted or put off by this, the way to see it is that there is always something you can address, tweak or improve on, be it your training strategy, your race plan, your psychological skills, your recovery ritual, your energy intake. And that means there’s always another reason to get back on that start line. I hope to see you there.

SECTION 1

On training

1

From runner to marathoner

Why the marathon is more than just another race

One of the things I realise anew each time I run a marathon is that 26.2 miles – or 42.2km – is a long way. Whether you are tackling the distance for the first time or the umpteenth, the challenge of running that far – at pace – does not diminish. The marathon asks a lot from your body, taking you into realms untouched by shorter-distance events. You could argue that ultramarathons do the same, but here the focus tends to shift from ‘How fast can I finish?’ to ‘Can I finish?’, which subtly changes the demands of the race.

The marathon requires not just the physiological and musculoskeletal endurance to ‘keep going’, but also the stamina to do so at your goal pace, which necessitates efficient fuel utilisation (I’m not talking about how many gels you can stomach but about how well your body uses fat and carbohydrates to produce energy).

It’s not just your body that gets pushed to its limits. In the early miles, you’ll need to draw on discipline and self-control to manage your pace and not get carried away; later in the race, you’ll face the struggle to stay focused and maintain a positive mindset, and in the last miles – when your body is clamouring for you to stop or slow down – you’ll need to summon up the last vestiges of your mental strength to ignore it and push on to the finish. Some of these challenges apply to any race – a 10K or half-marathon, for example. But in other respects, the marathon is unique.

The sheer distance – or length of time – that you’re on your feet for is the main factor that separates the marathon from other races. In the process of running 26.2 miles (42.2km), you’ll take over 40,000 strides, with a force of two to three times your bodyweight being exerted on each landing. If you weigh 70kg (11 stone), that’s a force equivalent to around 7 million kg (7000 tonnes) going through your joints, putting a lot of strain on the musculoskeletal system (bones, muscles and connective tissue, like cartilage and tendons). Then there’s the need to take fuel and fluid on board (you’ll burn somewhere in the region of 3000 calories over the course of the race, emptying your body’s stores of carbohydrate and sweating out 4 litres/7 pints of fluid) – and the prospect of dealing with setbacks such as muscle cramps, a rebellious stomach, chafing and blisters.

The issue of fuel utilisation, which I mentioned above (in fact, you’ll probably get sick of me mentioning it!), is another marathon-specific challenge. Runners are unlikely to ‘run out’ of fuel in ultramarathons because the pace they are running at (relative to their marathon pace) is slower. The same is true in shorter races, because they reach the finish before the body’s stores are depleted. (I’ll explain more about this later in this chapter.)

For all these reasons, I don’t view the marathon as ‘just another race’. Not if you want to run it well, anyway. (And by ‘well’, I don’t necessarily mean fast – I mean getting out of it what you hoped to.) To master the marathon, you need an understanding of what it requires from your body and what type of training will enable your body to adapt to those demands. You also need to know where you stand – what your starting point is – so you can plan appropriate training and allow enough time for those adaptations to take place. Let’s start by looking at the key attributes of a good marathon runner.

What makes a marathoner?

✓ Good cardiovascular (aerobic) fitness – to bring as much oxygen as possible into the body and deliver it to the working muscles.

✓ Good running economy – to use that oxygen efficiently.

✓ A high lactate threshold – to maintain a high proportion of maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max) for the duration of the marathon.

✓ Efficient fuel utilisation – to utilise a higher proportion of fat to produce energy at goal pace and conserve precious glycogen stores.

✓ Fatigue-resistant muscles – a higher proportion of fatigue-resistant ‘slow-twitch’ muscle fibres and a larger ‘workforce’ of recruitable muscle fibres allow muscles to contract repeatedly over a prolonged period without failing.

✓ A robust musculoskeletal system – to prevent injury.

✓ The right mindset and psychological skills for training and racing.

✓ The capacity to recover well and quickly from training.

Over the next few pages, we’re going to delve further into why these attributes matter for marathon running.

Cardiovascular fitness

Ninety-nine per cent of the energy required to run a marathon is produced aerobically (‘with oxygen’). And cardiovascular or aerobic fitness is all about the ability of the heart, lungs and blood to bring that oxygen into the body and transport it to the working muscles during exercise. There are a number of ways in which running (or any aerobic activity) improves the efficiency with which your body can do this (see ‘How training affects your cardiovascular system’ on the following page).

How training affects your cardiovascular system

A stronger heart can pump out more blood per beat (stroke volume) and per minute (cardiac output) while a training-induced increase in blood volume (yes, you can actually make more blood!) means more red blood cells – the all-important oxygen-carrying molecules. When the oxygen-rich blood arrives at the muscles, the capillaries surrounding each muscle allow the oxygen to pass through their flimsy walls (and allow waste products to pass out). The more capillaries you have, the more oxygen can diffuse into the muscles – an increase in the capillary network is one of the important effects of endurance training. One study found 33 per cent higher capillarisation in endurance athletes compared to non-active people.

There are two things that determine how much of the delivered oxygen gets used within the muscle to produce the energy required for running. The abundance of aerobic enzymes (essentially, enzymes are substances that facilitate chemical reactions) and the number, size and efficiency of the mitochondria, which are tiny structures that reside in every cell and specialise in aerobic energy production. All types and intensities of exercise boost mitochondrial function, but studies suggest that an intensity equal to or above the lactate threshold is most effective, particularly in older athletes.

You’ve probably heard the term ‘VO2 max’ (maximal aerobic capacity). This is a measure of how much oxygen can be utilised during maximal aerobic exercise, and is expressed as ml of oxygen, per kg of bodyweight, per minute. VO2 max is often wheeled out as the gold standard measure of endurance, and while it’s true that you won’t find a world-class marathoner with a really poor VO2 max (the average sedentary male may have a VO2 max of 35–45ml/kg/min while a well-trained marathon runner may be closer to 65ml/kg/min and an elite runner 80ml/kg/min) it is important to stress that VO2 max and endurance performance are not the same thing. Research has demonstrated that VO2 max can improve without an uptick in endurance performance – and vice versa.

When scientists have tried to predict marathon performance from VO2 max scores, they’ve failed miserably. This is because we don’t run 26.2 miles at maximal aerobic capacity – it’s simply not possible to sustain VO2 max pace for that long. Even over 5K, an elite runner will typically be operating slightly below their VO2 max (around 98 per cent of it). What matters is the proportion of maximal capacity that can be sustained in a marathon – and this is where two other physiological variables come into play.

Running economy

The first is ‘running economy’. This is all about efficient use of all that oxygen you’ve brought into your body. If we take two runners with an equally high VO2 max and get them to run at the same speed, the more economical runner will ‘spend’ less oxygen doing so, meaning their performance will be less limited by the availability of oxygen in the working muscles. Another way of looking at it is that if you improve your economy, you will either be able to run at any given pace (say, 8-minute-miling) using less oxygen than you did before, or run at a faster pace using the same amount that you used to need to hit 8-minute-miling. Think of it as your ‘miles per gallon’ rate. One study found that running economy explained 65 per cent of the variation in endurance performance.

So how do you become more economical? Research suggests that running itself – both how much you run and the length of time you have been a regular runner – plays a role in enhancing economy, probably because it improves the muscles’ oxidative capacity (their ability to take in oxygen) and neuromuscular efficiency (the communication between the brain and the muscles). Efficient running economy, built up over decades of training, is one of the reasons many lifelong runners continue to perform well as the years advance. If you’re newer to running, it’ll take time to reach your peak.

However, there are two stones not to leave unturned if you want to optimise your running economy. Studies show that strength training can have a significant effect, particularly plyometric training, which we look at in Chapter 11. Good running form (covered in Chapter 10) is another important factor. When we tire, running form tends to deteriorate (just watch runners at mile 20 of a marathon, compared to mile 2!), which dents running economy. Working on developing a more biomechanically efficient stride helps direct all your precious energy into propelling you forwards, not rocking side to side or bouncing up and down. It also helps minimise the risk of injuries. Bonus!

Lactate threshold

The second aspect of cardiovascular fitness that is key to a marathon runner is the oft-discussed ‘lactate threshold’ (LT). Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing inherently evil about lactate. It is a by-product of the metabolism of carbohydrates, which is recycled to be used as a source of fuel. At leisurely running speeds, not much lactate is produced and it can easily be cleared from the muscles. But as pace increases, so does lactate production, until it reaches the point at which it is being produced more quickly than it can be cleared, leading to an accumulation within the muscle. This makes the environment within the muscle very acidic, hampering muscle contraction and forcing you to slow down.

An average runner might hit lactate threshold at around 75 per cent of their VO2 max, while a more accomplished athlete might be closer to 85 or even 90 per cent. The higher the threshold, the more of their maximal aerobic capacity a runner can make use of, hence, the faster the pace they can sustain. Research suggests that the lactate threshold is the most important determinant of performance in races lasting 30 minutes or more. So if you can nudge the lactate threshold upwards through the right kind of training, you have a good chance of improving marathon performance. In Chapter 2, we look at what ‘the right kind of training’ involves, as well as how to figure out your own LT.

Efficient fuel utilisation

Running a marathon requires a lot of energy. To understand how your body produces energy, you need to get familiar with a substance called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the molecule involved in converting food into usable energy. However, the amount of ATP stored in your muscles is barely enough to run 26m, let alone 26 miles! Elite marathon coach Renato Canova estimates that the ATP required to run a marathon would weigh a whopping 50kg (110lb). So, instead of carrying ATP, your body needs to constantly resynthesise it. A good way to view ATP is like a bank card – it provides access to cash (energy) without weighing you down.

To access your energy account, you need a steady supply of oxygen and fuel – either glucose (from carbohydrate) or fatty acids (from fat). At low exercise intensities, fat is the preferred fuel source. No problems there – even the leanest runners have a generous supply. But when you’re running at anything other than the easiest of efforts, your body relies more on the breakdown of carbohydrate, which can be metabolised more rapidly. And here we hit another storage problem: there is only enough carbohydrate (stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver) to run at a sustained effort for around 90–120 minutes. Once these stores have been depleted, we are forced to rely on the more long-winded process of breaking down fat, which slows us down.

If, however, you can a) improve glycogen storage and b) get better at using fat as a fuel source at marathon pace, you are far less likely to run into energy problems. Research shows that a high volume of training and long runs can help to increase glycogen storage – well-trained runners can store as much as 40 per cent more glycogen than non-exercisers. Moderate-paced runs, sometimes called ‘aerobic threshold runs’ (think ‘a little bit faster than easy’) and long runs with bouts of marathon-pace running within them help to increase fat utilisation, thereby ‘sparing’ precious glycogen. Of course, there’s another important strategy to help us avoid running out of energy, and that’s taking carbs on board during the run, which we’ll cover in detail in Section 6.

Fatigue-resistant muscles

Muscular endurance refers to the muscles’ capacity to make repeated contractions for an extended period. Muscles are made up of thousands of cells, called fibres, of which there are distinct types with different attributes. ‘Slow-twitch’ fibres take time to reach their peak force and don’t produce as much force as their ‘fast-twitch’ neighbours, but they are easy to recruit and very fatigue-resistant – perfect for logging lots of miles. In contrast, fast-twitch fibres can produce greater force and do so more rapidly – but they tire more quickly. Their ‘crash and burn’ nature means they are only recruited when a very high force output is required in a short amount of time – such as an explosive jump – or when the slow-twitch fibres’ capacity has been exhausted through prolonged effort.

Unsurprisingly, elite distance runners tend to be endowed with a predominance of slow-twitch fibres, but the right kind of training can help any runner boost muscular endurance in three ways: 1) by making the existing slow-twitch fibres more fatigue-resistant, 2) by making some of the fast-twitch fibres (called ‘type 2A fibres’) behave more like slow-twitch fibres, and 3) by increasing the overall proportion of fibres that are recruited during exercise (akin to increasing the size of your workforce). This latter strategy involves something most runners don’t associate with marathon training – sprinting. We’ll look at how to incorporate this into marathon training in the next chapter.

A robust musculoskeletal system

It’s not just the cardiovascular system that needs staying power. The marathon runner’s muscles, bones and connective tissues (the musculoskeletal system) also need to be able to ‘endure’ the demands placed upon them by prolonged high-impact exercise. Running itself will gradually build up your capacity to withstand the stresses, provided you progress your mileage slowly (both in terms of overall volume and long runs). Strength and conditioning also play a role in building a more bulletproof musculoskeletal system that is less susceptible to injury and able to recover from the rigours of training more quickly.

The right mindset and psychological skills

You can be pretty sure that when Eliud Kipchoge ran the world’s first sub-2-hr-marathon in 2019, he wasn’t standing on the start line muttering ‘I’ll probably mess this up.’ ‘I bet I hit the wall.’ Nor, when the going got really tough, did he let himself start thinking ‘what’s the point?’ ‘I feel awful…’ In fact, he practised smiling at regular intervals, to lower his perception of effort. The point is that your mind isn’t just a passenger on this marathon journey, it’s the driver. In recent years, there’s been compelling evidence regarding the true source of fatigue: not the body, but the mind. We’ll be looking at techniques to improve mindset and focus as well as learning to become ‘comfortable with being uncomfortable’ in Chapter 6.

Recovery capacity

The ability to bounce back from training quickly is a valuable asset for a marathoner. It’s what enables you to maintain a high volume of training and handle numerous high-intensity sessions within your programme. But every runner’s capacity for recovery is different, determined by genetics, age and experience, among other things. As you get fitter, your recovery will hasten a little – and you can help things along with some nutritional and lifestyle strategies that we’ll look at in Chapter 9. But what’s most important is getting to know how your body responds to training, so you can plan your schedule accordingly.

Feeling daunted by this lengthy list? Don’t be. You will already be strong in some areas – others, you’ll feel less confident about or maybe haven’t even thought about before. The whole purpose of training is to get you from A (where you are now) to B (where you want to be). If you could already achieve your goal tomorrow, there’d be no need for it!

How training works

In essence, developing fitness is a process of response and adaptation to training. When you place a training ‘stress’ (or ‘load’) on the body that slightly exceeds its current capacity, it is pushed outside its comfort zone. It responds to this stress by instigating the necessary adaptations within physiological, metabolic and musculoskeletal systems that will enable it to cope better next time. In other words, it becomes fitter.

There’s a useful acronym for this: SAID – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. What this means is that the training stress you place on your body needs to be relevant to what you are trying to achieve. For example, doing lots of swimming won’t necessarily help you run quicker; the sort of training programme that might yield a Parkrun PB won’t necessarily help your marathon campaign. This is known as ‘training specificity’. It doesn’t mean that every moment of physical activity that you do has to be running, nor that all your running must be at marathon pace – but it does have a bearing on what goes into your training programme, and when.

Another important issue is the magnitude of the training stress. If you add too much load at once, you overstress your body and risk injury, exhaustion or failing to complete, rather than adaptation. If you don’t add enough, the stimulus isn’t great enough to trigger adaptation. It’s like the three bears’ porridge in the fairy