Marathon Training Basis is about the Marathon training fundamentals, which means how to prepare a marathon project – the best way. The fundamentals in Running training are simple: To develop enough endurance to be able to maintain the necessary speed at the entire distance, you want to complete- or compete at. Marathon training is about endurance. Therefore, marathon training performs in varying degrees for all runners from 400 M to Marathon in a sports context.
Marathon Training Overview
My intention with the information here is to do it well organized. So, we will look at what matters most in Marathon training. There are several key elements in how to develop and train the body and mind to cope with the training loads and be aware of the balance between running and recovery.
We have to clarify and understand the body’s energy supply, the psychological, physiological and mechanical key factors behind effective marathon training, so you can prepare yourself with the essentials.
After many years of running, competition and experiences, I have found the factors/keywords below as the most important elements behind effective marathon training:
- Energy Cumbustion
- Carbohydrate and fat
- The Oxygen System
- Utilization rate
- Endurance
- Lactate Threshold – LT
- Running Economy
- Fluid balance
- Recovery
- Supercompensation
You can get answers to many of the why what and how questions and about the body and mind’s reaction to long-distance running and how to gain the most from it.
Prepare a Marathon – Develop Confidence
To develop the necessary confidence, and create momentum and support in marathon training, I think It’s a good idea with knowledge of the specific Psychological, physiological and mechanical aspects of marathon training.
Some of us learned it the hard way. I started at a young age by just running more and more because I liked it and it felt very uplifting on the long slow LSD runs, which is the cornerstone of marathon training.
But I also suffered from overtraining, loss of motivation, etc. because there was so much about running, I didn’t know about. Particular long-distance running in combination with interval training and how the body/mind reacts in the long term.
So, I started researching running and particularly long-distance running, its impact on body and mind and how to develop my running skills in the best way. Learning something about human physiology and running performances, gave me confidence and I became better to manage my own running performances.
Prepare For a Marathon What Do You Want To Attain?
If you haven’t tried marathon training before, it is important from the start to know exactly what you wish to attain with the training. You have to understand the changes and improvements, use different training forms according to their different strengths, balance the training and try to get rid of any doubts about the training in the development phase.
The aim is to give you knowledge, because particularly with good knowledge about the physiological and mechanical aspects of the training, you will develop the confidence, which is necessary to stay in the process, to keep up the motivation and complete your marathon training project.
Maybe you want to start a marathon beginner program and run a city marathon in X months from today?
Learn to Know Yourself
When you read and start using what fits best to you, by actually going out and start running, you will over time learn to know yourself better. You will learn a lot about your strengths and weaknesses and how to overcome your limitations.
You will work with commitment, determination, motivation and self-discipline even if you don’t believe you can from your current level. You are going to push yourself more than usual since you are trying to improve yourself.
These improvements have a kind of price because you develop new habits and the old habits will often make resistance. That is something you have to go through. Over time you become a better ‘version’ of yourself too.
Preparing Marathon – The Training
It’s about understanding the principles of how marathon training works on you. When you are so far, then you can start organizing the training on your terms. Marathon training should be a tool to meet the demands you make on yourself. In that way, you also get the opportunity to train a lot but well-balanced according to your running level.
If you just choose a marathon program from the internet, as you think suits your running level it’s very likely that you will drop out, because how do you know your current running level?
Marathon programs from the internet are generally “to do” schemes that don’t give you the necessary understanding and knowledge, so you can choose to develop a personal training program – which you can do here – and know your outcome before you start.
Marathon Training And The Cardiovascular System
The dictionary definition for cardiovascular training is: ‘physical conditioning that exercises the heart, lungs and associated blood vessels. In other words, when you do a cardio session, you’re giving your heart, lungs and circulatory system – in addition to any other muscle groups that you use – a good workout.
So, cardiovascular training is extremely important if you want to develop your running skills and attain better running results because this system is your body’s engine – and without a stronger engine you don’t get better running results.
It will give you more to run after training time than after training distance. E.g. a faster runner will not run at the same time on a measured distance as a slower runner and if you run a measured distance, you may also risk increasing the pace to go for a personal record from time to time.
Hereby you will lose the most important part of the cardiovascular training, which is the amount of training – you need kilometers in the legs.
Prepare a marathon project – a better solution
A better solution would be if you run where you want to run in e.g. 1 hour. It’s about developing an almost fatigue-free condition, which means that the oxygen debt only increases slowly, that you run around the lactate threshold and your ability to recover faster increases over time.
Endurance is the general effectiveness of the cardiovascular system. The best way to develop the Cardiovascular system is by running – only cross-country skiing is better and that can be modeled by the Cross trainer/elliptical trainer fitness machine.
When you get to know yourself better and improve your physical condition over time, you will be able to run both longer and faster. But at that time, it’s becoming a habit, so it will be the running speed that stops you not the distance.
It’s better to start too slowly than too fast. If you can realize that and do it, you are on your way to becoming a better runner than you thought possible. So, I have used my best intention to give you some knowledge about marathon training basis.
If you are interested in Marathon training, I hope you get something out of this post and if you have any questions about the topic or want to leave your own personal review, please leave a comment below.
