Marathon Fitness - 3 Important Rules

Whilst training to run a marathon needn't demand any actual skill or talent as such, it does take determination and commitment, you will need to consistently give enough time to improving and developing your marathon fitness.

Marathon fitness can be summed up as the ability to be able to run the marathon distance completely (26.2 miles) in one go without stopping or giving up.

To accomplish this level of fitness, you will need to adhere to these 3 Important rules: -

Only Practice Makes You Better

To become good at anything requires practise. To become exceptional at anything requires practise, dedication and a will to be the best you can be. For the purposes of running your first marathon you are just aiming for a steady improvement in your body’s fitness and stamina levels which needs to be gradually encouraged over the course of many weeks, by following a marathon training program that is both structured and progressive (gets a little harder each run as your fitness improves)

Variation Spices Up Your Training

Running at a slow steady pace (steady state training) is desirable to some degree in order to build up your mileages, but you will boost the distances you can run far faster and more effectively by varying the way you train each session. By using advanced training techniques that push you in different ways such as hill running, speed work and interval training to name just a few, you will increase your marathon fitness at a much greater speed.

Once You Believe You Will Achieve

Once you know you can do something, you are much more likely to believe that you can do it. You’ll also understand how hard it feels when you go through it again and be prepared for it mentally. This is why at some point during your training you will have to try a long run at or around the marathon distance.

It is very important to ensure that you leave at least 2 or 3 weeks between your longest run and the real marathon so you have plenty of time to recover because the distance will take it out of your legs.

If you’re a marathon newbie that wants to learn how to quickly improve your marathon fitness and run a marathon in the shortest achievable time, then you need to turn your attention to finding out how your body adapts and changes during training, so you know when to move forward harder and when to back off a little. Without this awareness you really are playing a guessing game with your fitness.

If you've always wanted to run a marathon, ‘Marathon Training For Beginners’ will teach you everything you need to know, an entertaining and easy to use marathon training schedule for beginners that want to learn how to successfully run a marathon in the shortest potential time. Click here for more details.