Marathon Training Advice Part 3

Water is the body's most important nutrient. It provides the medium in which most of the body processes occur. You need to get used to drinking water regularly throughout the day. Consider taking a bottle of water to work and sipping small amounts every 20-30 minutes. It is often best to drink a pint of water 60-90 minutes before you run and even take sips in the 30 minutes prior to starting. As a rough guide try to drink half a pint of water for every 30 minutes of running.

One of the main reasons for “hitting the wall” in a marathon is dehydration. Learning to drink on the run will prevent this. This will need to be practiced in training. Many runners are frightened of drinking on the run for fear of a stitch or cramp. With practice, your body will overcome this potential problem.

Many runners use carbohydrate drinks in a race situation. Many race organisers supply these along with water. Be sure to have tried these in training before using them in a race.

Carbohydrate drinks have important benefits. They often contain the vital electrolytes lost from the body by sweating and can give your body that extra boost needed to perform well as the race continues. The loss of sodium, magnesium and potassium often causes cramps and other problems.

The best marathon runners in the world have a resting heart rate of less than 50 beats per minute and sometimes as low as 40. During the marathon, however, their heart beats much faster and often nearer to (or even above) 180 beats perminute.

A top marathon runner's beat pulses over 22000 times in a race. The heart is the one muscle in your body that will never lie. It serves as a barometer for the rest of the body, telling you how hard you are exercising, how fast you are using up energy and even your emotional state. It weighs all of these variables together and then comes out with a sigle number to report you overall condition.

A heart rate monitor is, therefore, worth serious consideration if you want to train,exercise and rest correctly in preparation for your marathon performance (link to shop)

A heart rate monitor will give you information immediately during training or competition. It can also be used to monitor your recovery on a rest day. It is often said that a heart rate monitor is like having a portable full time coach attached to your body. This is provided you listen to your body, accept the information the heart rate monitor provides and train accordingly.

The three most important variables in designing a training programme are; frequency,duration and intensity. The first two are easy to observe but the third can be elusive without a monitor, because your heart rate response to exercise changes as you become more aerobically fit.

As a rough guide, the average adult's maximum heart rate is 220 beats per minute minus age. For example a thirty year old male should have a maximum heart rate of 190beats per minute. Training for the marathon will need to be completed at a heart rate that varies between different percentages of that maximum number. A long steady run might be completed at 70% of maximum heart rate as an overall average. This amounts to an average heart rate of 154 beats per minute for the duration of the run. Wearing the heart rate monitor would allow close adherence to a 70% target. This is a basic example of the help a monitor can provide. There is more information on Heart Rate Monitors elsewhere on this site.